Final -30- thoughts on Pretendian Ward Churchill

Via Nick Estes, I didn’t know he died about 5-6 weeks ago. Nick writes about one thing, ultimately, the NYT’s obit and its whitewashing of Churchill being a pretendian.

He was.

Counterpunch had a member of his defense team from his wrongful dismissal suit against the University of Colorado do his obit there. No mention of “Pretendian,” just the suit. Managing editor Joshua Frank republished a 2014 piece with no mention of “Pretendian” in the update header and no asking him about it in the original interview of Churchill, even though it was pretty well known by then.

As for that suit? Yeah, the university was wrong, and may have perjured itself too.

My focus is mainly on this issue.

I’ve said before at Blogger and in comments on Substack that American Indians are not Rousselian noble savages and were not such, nor, if you don’t like the philosophy term that way, “Rousselian nobles,” before 1492, or even circa 1000 CE with Norse contact. My piece there and comment here, is mainly about American Indians and environmentalism, legend vs reality.

But, back to the main.

First, it’s long been known to other Whites besides me. High Country News wrote about it in 2019 before they went down the Rousseau road during COVID. Beyond the likes of HCN, non-skeptical leftist environmentalists like Wrong Kind of Green, have done the same.

Second, Gary Kamiya, way back in 2009, fired a blunderbuss. He indirectly tackled the Pretendian angle, noting that the Rocky Mountain News had covered it even further, but also took on the Rousselian noble savage angle in ways far beyond me, and did so both in Churchill’s own allegedly historical work and beyond. He also had a potshot five years into the future for Frank, who claimed Churchill was being picked on by librulz as well as conservatives. Actually, Churchill played tribalist librulz like a violin. And even academics, or maybe I should say especially academics, liked being played, and like those at Reddit’s r/AskHistorians, reverberated Churchillian notes.

Per Kamiya, Churchill repeated the BS passed along by librulz, some non-skeptical leftists, and yes, some actual American Indians.

By overreaching, Churchill did damage to his field — and that is the thing that is hard to forgive. … The ultimate lesson of the Churchill case is that no cause, however just, benefits from being taken up by a propagandist.

That’s true, period.

Beyond Kamiya, to wrap it up with a bow? Being a capitalist propagandist while pretending you’re not — which is usually the Pretendian bottom line — does even more damage.

ADDENDUM Per Counterpunch's search bar, the word "pretendian" isn't even in the entirety of Counterpunch online.  

RIP Huckleberry J Butchmeup aka Lindsey Graham

The South Carolina Senator has died, reportedly after a brief and unexpected illness.

Note my addition of "reportedly." Do you really believe this? If so, I've got space at a straight-folks only nude beach in Charleston for sale. 

Speaking of, will Gay Trowdy, I mean Trey Gowdy, and Tim Scott be pallbearers? Named in the will?

And how fitting that Nancy Mace is interested in filling the seat. A walking big boob to be followed by a walking pair of big boobs, especially if there's a walking pair of boobs carrying the casket.

On the more serious side, Graham lied on behalf of Israel and Ukraine, and on behalf of himself, when he folded like a cheap suit to Trump after saying he wouldn't. That's doubly true, per AP's political obit story, after Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, the most laughable political obits will surely be the ones coming from Never Trumpers, like what Steve Schimdt penned. Know what, Steve? Had Havana Ted or Huck his own self gotten nominated in 2016, half of Trump 1.0's executive changes would still have been done, we would have gone largely down the same road on Israel as reality and even worse in Ukraine.

They're the hypocrites as much as Graham, as fellow "Three Amigos" per the AP story, John McCain and Joe Liberman, would be supporting Trump's war on Iran for the sake of Israel if alive today. Graham may not have been a personal piece of shit the way McCain was, per my takedown obit, but no, on geopolitics, he was not alone, other than the fold to Trump.  (I never did a takedown obit on Lieberman; today, digging up his carcass, stuffing it on an airplane and throwing it out over Gaza would be enough.)

That said, yes, dishonest, too. 

If he'd been more honest, maybe Dr. Jeebus H. Trump would have visited him just like McConnell. 

Meanwhile, for yesterday's conspiracy theory nutters on Shitter?

Yes, Russian President Vlad the Impaler Putin, learning from shooting Litvinenko with a Polonium-210 pellet, shot Lindsey Graham with digoxin. A more likely cause of heart-attack death would be Graham snorting too many lines of coke with Zelensky.

At least we know that some late-life fast-onset version of AIDS didn't kill him. Right? 

The reality is that he beat Mitch to the heart attack finish line. 

RIP Bobby Cox, still getting a roiding pass

The long-time Atlanta Braves (and shorter-time Toronto Blue Jays) manager, voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame a number of years ago, has died at the age of 84.

And, he continues to get a pass on his managing of alleged, certain in my opinion in one case for sure, steroid-using (or other PED-using) players. The two managers voted in with him, Tony La Russa and Joe Torre, have faced much more scrutiny (while pumping out much more denialism). Cox hasn't.

Indeed, ESPN's own story, at the top link, doesn't even mention this, though at that very place, Rick Reilly mentioned all three, and the hypocrisy, when they were voted into Cooperstown.

Why? Maybe it's because, other than the borderline case of Gary Sheffield, Cox didn't manage any clear HOFers, or players with dramatic performances? (As a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I don't think Mark McGwire is a HOFer even with his PED-influenced numbers, but he did have dramatic performances.) But, outside of Barry Bonds, Torre managed both Roger Clemens and A-Rod. Even deducting for the enhancements, all three continue to be shut out by veterans committees in the first two cases, after the BBWAA took a 10-year pass. A-Rod is likely to face the same fate.

Yet the trio of denialist managers plus former commissioner Bud Selig are all in Cooperstown.

It's a big steaming pile of shit.

I think Cox knew, as much as La Russa and Torre, even if Atlanta wasn't as much of a "locus" as Oakland's dugout or that of the Yankees. (The Texas Rangers became another node when Jose Canseco went there but they've not had a HOF manager until Bruce Bochy, who will go in with a Giants hat. And, the Mac/La Russa Cardinals being a possible node has also flown under the radar screen because, of course, that's not the Cardinal Way.)

Riffing off Reilly, by the early 2000s, all three were managerial elder statesmen. Certainly they were after their 2013 elections. Yet all engaged in denialism both before and after. Denialism extends to fans in the case of Cox, per a post on Reddit's r/mlb, where my comments to this end have been massively downvoted.

And, no, "not too soon," either, no more than with a takedown or semi-takedown obit of a politician. 

RIP Darth Cheney

Yes, plenty of others have written already, but here's my few thoughts.

Torture. That's the bottom line, not just being a neocon nut in general.

In the 2008 presidential transition, people like me prodded Dear Leader to name a war crimes special prosecutor. Rahmbo Emanuel nixed that, and O'Bummer wouldn't override him. 

Weaselshit Anthony Romero (he is, for MANY reasons), executive director of the ACLU, was a weaselshit with "prosecute then pardon." 

Judge Napolitano, who perhaps deserved more credit even back in the day, wanted Cheney — and Bush — indicted, then of course prosecuted, without mentioning pardons. 

A year later, Uncle Fester admitted to being a war criminal, after all. 

Of course, today, many BlueAnon, and lamestream media like CNN, are normalizing Darth Cheney cuz he and daddykins' daughter Liz were/are Never Trumpers. (That said, even after Dems regained control of Congress in 2007, Fancy Nancy Pelosi refused to support Kucinich's impeachment push.) Reality? This same Liz, so high and mighty about the power of Congress after Jan. 6, 2021, a dozen years earlier didn't want to talk about her dad hiding secret CIA assassination plans from Congress. More on the hit squads here. 

Speaking of media, there's also the issue of whether or not Shrub Bush was Uncle Fester's puppet, along with the related idea, per the likes of Tim Weiner, of whether or not Bob Woodward was a sucker for a line of Bush bullshit. Woodward's lies regarding both already started in 2005. This brief may get us closer to Bush-Cheney relationship.

That said, give Vlad the Impaler Putin credit for telling Cheney to STFU long ago. 

Forwarding to the Middle East of then and today? Darth only liked democracy when it was pro-Merikkka. Freely elected Hamas? Can't have that. (They were, Ed Buckner, or pretty much so.)

Domestically, meanwhile, there was his sekrut energy task force. Daughterkins never challenged that, did she? Per the link, never did any Gang Green type enviros that sat in. Non-Gang Green, like Center for Biological Diversity, were never invited.

In a combination of domestic and international, Darth had connections to international bribery. 

Speaking of lies and liars, here's Shrub on Darth's death:

"I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best. He held to his convictions and prioritized the freedom and security of the American people."

Uhh, sure. Those lies are joined by others from Nuclear Condi Rice and Slick Willie Clinton.

RIP Jane Goodall — but not unalloyed

Per her most recent book, and my take, my personal RIP for Jane Goodall is not unalloyed. She appeared to be descending into New Ageism and pseudoscience, sadly. She had a co-author in Gail Hudson for this and her previous 3 books, which may be part of it. But? It's still Goodall's name as the lead author. (This Douglas Abrams as third author is only a co-author on this one of Goodall's books.) 

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Too New Agey and too based on logical fallacies for me.

I agree that developing hope and resilience are good. I think anecdotal stories can be a part of this. But, the background thoughts, the framing? Not for me.

On the former of the two things mentioned in the first paragraph? The "spark that's in everything" is where Goodall started losing me. Claiming trees communicate pretty much sealed the deal.

Reality? Trees don't even "communicate," re the example she used that's all the rage in non-critical-thinking biologists today. Rather, fungi on the roots of one tree "communicate" (and scare quotes needed, because they don't actually communicate, either) with the fungi on the roots of another tree. The two, or more, trees have nothing to do with directing, or "directing," this. They're just free riders.

The logical fallacy? Bullseye fallacy, file drawer fallacy, whatever you call it. For every person that survives horrifying child abuse, civil war, etc, at least one more doesn't. Not telling their stories, especially when you are presenting from a New Agey angle, can — even if not intended — guilt trip survivors into "why can't I be more hopeful?" Barbara Ehrenreich covered this perfectly on her book about cancer survival.

I wavered between two and three stars but ultimately went with two.

View all my reviews

I suspect that, had she written another book post-COVID, Goodall would have gone even further down the New Agey world, perhaps diving into things like traditional medicine next. Related? About three-fifths down her Wiki bio, she apparently believed, or semi-believed, in Bigfoot and other cryptids.

Apparently, this was nothing new. In "Reason for Hope," a pre-Hudson book, Wiki notes:

Goodall described the implications of a mystical experience she had at Notre Dame Cathedral in 1977: "Since I cannot believe that this was the result of chance, I have to admit anti-chance. And so I must believe in a guiding power in the universe – in other words, I must believe in God."[98] When asked if she believes in God, Goodall said in September 2010: "I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I'm out in nature. It's just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me."[99] When asked in the same year if she still considers herself a Christian, Goodall told the Guardian "I suppose so; I was raised as a Christian." and stated that she saw no contradiction between evolution and belief in God.

Gack. Not on the theistic evolution part, but on overinterpreting the mystical experience part. I above mention Ehrenreich and her book about cancer survival. The problem is that Ehrenreich dived at least as deep into that same empty pool in her memoir, as I noted in detail.

Other problems? "Seeds of Hope," her second Hudson collaboration, had plagiarism issues. Beyond the issue of plagiarism is WHAT she plagiarized, which the Washington Post noted included an "amateurish astrology site."

She did a lot of good, so this isn't a full takedown obit. It is halfway one, though. 

RIP Grandma Carole Keeton Strayhorn Rylander

RIP Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn Grandma. A symbol — one of four — of Tex-ass politics in the 2006 gubernatorial race, all of whom eventually shot themselves in the foot politically. (Libertarians had a candidate and there was a write-in, but they don't count.)

I wrote about the campaign at the time it was breaking out.

She herself? Siring future Texas GOP progeny by her first husband while eventually exemplifying Texas and national GOP hypocrisy by becoming a three-time divorcee.

Kinky Friedman? Couldn't stop cracking jokes long enough to get serious, despite advisors from then-Minnesota Governor Jesse The Body Ventura helping him out — before most quit. Frankly, I think Kinky was afraid of the possibility of winning, as I noted at his death.

Chris Bell? Eventually showed how much of a ConservaDem he is, despite Progress Texas anointing him, and that his ethics schtick was bullshit. More here, from his own mouth, on his shallowness.

Tricky Ricky Perry? Failed presidential runs and getting high on back pain meds while being tough on drugs.

Sadly, sites like "Reform" Austin (really?) have non-takedown encomium obits.

RIP Jimmy Carter, and RIP to the legends of him as president

This is a semi-takedown obit, but since I didn't have a chance to do much when he passed away, I'm timing it for his state funeral.

Pieces by Chris Hedges and Counterpunch are good starting points. Counterpunch puts his Nobel Peace Prize in snarky context next to other U.S. presidents who have been so honored. Hedges talks about Carter's human rights failings, beyond Central America, but also his neoliberal domestic failings, including but not limited to deregulation of trucking and airlines. My review of "Everyone Who is Gone is Here" adds more to Hedges' foreign policy angle on Carter, specific to the Northern Triangle.

And, below, are selections of my review of Stu Eizenstat's bio of Carter's presidential years, Stu having served as White House domestic policy advisor.

President Carter: The White House Years by Stuart E. Eizenstat
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After I recently read Kai Bird’s somewhat disappointing bio of Jimmy Carter, I saw other reviewers of it mention Jonathan Alter’s bio as better. Well, I’ve not read that, but my library had this book, and so I checked it out. (Alter's turned out to be a 3-star meh.)

And, it is better indeed.

This book is at its best on two issues: The “malaise” speech and the Iranian hostages. I’ll give the basics of both without full-on detailed spoilers.

On the speech, he first notes Pat Caddell’s Rasputin-like hold over both the Carters. And, yes, he uses the word “Rasputin.” Then he describes where the “malaise” came from, since Carter never used the word. It was in Caddell’s notes and talking points, that eventually got to Elizabeth Drew at the NYT.

As for its effect? Eizenstat says Carter initially boomed UPward in public polling. 17 percentage points. What happened? Carter’s Cabinet firings and how they were done undercut this.

(All probably needed to go, but only Schlesinger out in the cold. Michael Blumenthal? Find another economics position for him … assistant head of the Fed? Califano? Move him inside the Oval as a White House counsel; in some way, clutch the scorpion closer.

On the hostages? He notes that the biggest failure, after they were taken, was Carter making an ironclad “no harm” commitment to their families, closely followed by too personalizing their situations. Both became lead anchors on his political future.

On how this happened? Ignoring both Ambassador Sullivan and George Ball, who I did not know before had been involved with analyzing the situation before Khomenei solidified control. Before the Shah vamoosed, even, Ball, like Sullivan, recommended reaching out, and QUICKLY, to non-theocratic opposition and cutting a deal. (Ball, per Counterpunch, had been Carter's original choice for Secretary of State, but the Israel lobby, already on the rise, nixed this. Perhaps Cold Warriors butt-hurt over Vietnam did too.)

After the hostages had been taken? Eizenstat says their continued holding wasn't so much an FU to the US as it was pro-Khomenei Islamic Republic types wanting to get the upper hand over the quasi-secular, theoretically official government. He notes US efforts to negotiate with government officials went nowhere, even when seeming to go somewhere, because none of them had Khomenei's sign-off, an issue that continues with Iran's dual government today. (Counterpunch discusses this briefly.)

This relates to the taking of the hostages, Eizenstat says. He says that from what we can tell, Khomenei did not order this, but knew it in advance. Although Eizenstat doesn't use the US presidential phrase of "plausible deniability," it seems this is exactly what was at stake.

On domestic stuff? Eizenstat is right on Carter’s legacy on energy, and the difficulty in getting his energy policy bill passed. He’s right on not wanting national health care without cost controls, still an issue today. He’s right on Ted Kennedy refusing to compromise with Carter any more than he had with Nixon, and being wrong there.

He also praises to the point of overpraising on airline and truck/railroad dereg. On the former, dereg is not the only reason airline costs dropped. On the latter, some things should have been retained; don’t just blame Reagan and others later than Carter.

The chapter on how Andy Young, and his promoted deputy, influenced the 1980 Dem primary is interesting. Had Kennedy not won New York, he would have dropped out, but the US supporting an Arab resolution at the UN, falling through several cracks, backfired.

The book is also good overall on Carter’s personality and his political personality and the problems it caused.

Although five-star overall, it misses addressing two of those problems from the previous paragraph. One is that Carter’s engineering micromanagement personality, not just wanting to be the anti-Nixon, is why he refused to have a chief of staff for two years. Related? Despite being warned about it, he hired both Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski because, IMO, he thought he could engineering-manage both of them. (Hamilton Jordan, per Counterpunch, said he would resign if that happened. Hah! We know he didn't.) If we could half-star, I'd cut to 4.5 because of not going deeper into just how self-injurious Carter really was.

View all my reviews

Per Hedges, and per my own knowledge, yes, Begin rolled Carter at Camp David. But? At that time, maybe Carter was halfway willing to be rolled and let Begin be the fall guy. (Begin, of course, simply saw himself as doing what he thought needed being done for Israel.) Hedges notes that Camp David had no enforcement mechanism on Israeli settlements. In big hindsight, no Camp David deal at all might have been better than what actually happened.

As for Carter the peace candidate? As president, long before the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan at its then-government's (free? unfree?) request, he did an about-face and started asking for more defense spending, per this second Counterpunch piece. As for that request? We started arming the mujahedeen BEFORE the USSR moved in.

As for Carter in the White House as a person? I've read Secret Service claims those self-carried suitcases were sometimes empty. That famous smile looked like a Duchenne's smile quite often.  

Beyond Pat Caddell as inventor of "malaise," per Wiki, don't forget that he was an informal advisor to Trump in 2016, and a regular collaborator with Steve Bannon, so a semi-insider even if he didn't have a formally defined role. After Trump was elected, Caddell was among those pushing his calling of the media "the enemy of the American people."

RIP Kinky Friedman

Via Kuff, I saw the Trib story this morning. More at the Chron. Yet more at the Trib in a longform, focused on the 2006 gubernatorial race. 

As a newspaper editor, remembering that campaign, including being part of a group interview of Kinky after a campaign gig, I knew already then what Kuff learned years later:

Kinky was entertainer first, politician second. 

In fact, I think that, despite admonitions from people like me to "Pivot" to more serious, like Jesse Ventura, then in the middle of his Minnesota gubernatorial time, he was actually afraid he might win.

At the same time, he had the most confused campaign in the world, on stances. The Venn diagram of people supporting both legalized marijuana and open prayer in public schools ain't big in Texas today and was microscopic in 2006. And, tho he ran as a Democrat later, it was as a ConservaDem of some sort, then, too, a Jim Hightower who couldn't get serious and couldn't get left-populist, trying to get Hightower's Ag Commish seat, and I don't think the punditocracy in 2006 got him. And, on him being a ConservaDem and one other thing, in 2006? Yeah, it was fun joking, spinning off him stressing his Jewish heritage, about how he'd bring kosher government to Austin. Given all his other stances, today? He'd be turning the DPS loose on pro-Palestinian protestors as much as Abbott did. (That's the pro-Palestinian protestors at places like Rice and UT that ConservaDem Kuff still won't mention.)

Contra Kuff, Kinky being in the 2006 gov race didn't cost the Dems the chance to beat Tricky Ricky Perry. Milquetoast Chris Bell wasn't winning, no way, no how. (And, contra Kuff, it was actually a six-person race; the Libertarians were in, as was write-in James Dillon.)

So, since Kinky's been out of the political angles for years, this doesn't warrant the focus of a full takedown obit of Kinky, but it is a mild one, and a bankshot on Kuff, too.

NOT so #RIP on Noam Chomsky the duopolist, backdoor Zionist and dated intellectual

This isn't going to be as fierce of a takedown obit as I did on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka the Notorious RBG, aka here, the Neoliberal RBG, a few years ago. (And, yes, as of 3 p.m. CDT here in the USofA, he may be, per Monty Python, "not quite dead" yet. But, re the stroke that hit him last year? If he's speechless and communicative only by body gestures, to go "meta" on linguistics issues, there's no way of knowing how much of the world he understands anyway. And, to go quantum-meta, maybe whether he's dead or not depends on who's observing. Schrödinger's Chomsky, anybody?)

But, per the header, and, on the idea that he is dead, there's that issue staring us in the face. And, the two others that I added to the original.

Update, 4:10 p.m. CDT:

Noam appears quite alive, even if, per his stroke, how "alive" is he? (Is his second wife acting like Clarke Abbey to Ed Abbey, a legacy-protector, and legacy-hawker, as much as anything? And, sadly, one of the early push-backs on the "he's dead" came from Glennwald; the sadly is the degree to which Chomsky cozied up to Greenwald, which only increased, AFAIK, after he moved to Brazil and his second marriage.

So, do NOT "bring out your dead" if they're still alive.

Anyway, he's still, dead, alive or undead, a duopolist and a backdoor Zionist.

And, we now have the issue of egg on your face, tribalism, and questions of who's a Chomsky insider these days and who's not. I tackle all of that.

Noam shoved it in the political public intellectuals' faces four years ago when he cosigned a public letter telling Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins to "run a safe states strategy." Hawkins told him, Barbara Ehrenreich (a Maoist duopolist!) and others, politely, to STFU, after first critiquing their errors and bad assumptions. I doubled down on the STFU and the critique of the thought behind it. 

Worse? None of these duopoly sheepdoggers offered Hawkins any quid pro quo.

But, that was nothing new for Noam, who, to be honest, was a hypocrite. I mean, you have to be, to offer near-blanket condemnations of US foreign policy under presidents of both duopoly parties, rightful condemnations of human rights violations and more, and then go sheepdogging, even as a Hillbot in 2016, and then getting somewhat self-righteous after 2016 election day. Chomsky refused to look at Democrats' Overton-window shifting, which, on foreign policy, has seen the chickens come home to roost with #GenocideJoe after Oct. 7, 2023. (It may have been in part due to health issues, but Chomsky seeing the chickens come home to roost himself had been pretty quiet in the past 8 months.)

That said, even in 2012, he couldn't bring himself to talk about third-party candidates. But, he did like Democrat in DSA Rosey clothes Bernie Sanders.

==

Speaking of? Noam has been chickenshit on BDS, as Mondoweiss details. Refusing to support the Right of Return is chickenshit 101, and yes, it's backdoor Zionism. (And, in turn, it probably ties back to his duopoly sheepdogging.) Beyond that, the idea that Israel breaks international law on other issues anyway, so, we are asking for something that won't happen anyway, is Zionism 202. Imagine if, on the United States, somebody had told that to Chomsky as justification for not pushing for UN resolutions about the US.

Here's the nutgraf, down at the bottom, of that piece:

But perhaps Professor Chomsky’s strangest statement of all, a rather terrifying statement on the face of it, is that “There is no reason to expect Israel to accept a Palestinian population it does not want.” There you have it, all condensed into one sentence, an admission that Israel is a racially predicated state and that the rights of the Palestinians themselves must remain subservient to it. There is no reason to expect a settler nation to accept the people whose land it took. Everything is framed in terms of what Israel wants, or what Israel will or will not agree to. Is this the same Noam Chomsky whose Manufacturing Consent and Fateful Triangle sit on my bookshelf?

That's Noam Chomsky, folks. (Per the first segment, above, let's not forget that St. Bernard of Sanders is also anti-BDS. No wonder Chomsky puffed him as a smokescreen to hide the fact that he was at bottom line still a duopoly guy.)

I had glanced at that Mondoweiss piece a few years back, when trying to run to ground just how much off the wall (I knew they were at least somewhat off the wall) Margaret Kimberly's claims about Chomsky were. (His death will probably bring some more of that out of the woodwork.) But, I looked at it in more depth today when I saw Chomsky trending on Twitter and the first claims that he had passed away. Noam really does not look very good in that piece, even with his "nuances."

Side note: Per his Wiki bio, in the late 1930s, he considered moving to a kibbutz in then-Mandatory Palestine. And, a newspaper in Brazil, where he moved to a few years ago, says he did live on a kibbutz in 1953. So, his later "backdoor Zionism" was of a piece. (And, we can't even blame Leon Uris' "Exodus," or the movie, which I do blame in part, and semi-seriously, for Biden's stance.)

And, people on the r/Chomsky subreddit didn't like me calling him a backdoor Zionist.

Is it any wonder he was a duopoly sheepdogger?

Interesting side note: In an old interview with Al Jazeera, Chomsky notes that Israeli leaders, including Bibi, would usually ultimately, at least on the surface, fall in line when a US president staked out a certain stance. That stopped with Obama, he says. But, Chomsky doesn't seem to ponder the likely Israeli racism behind that.

==

Dated intellectual?

Yes, part 1 ties with the above. Here's a brief rundown of his other foreign policy pulled-punch stances.

But, we've already covered that.

Sidebar: He came off as clueless (and in hindsight, was he having mental problems?) when he suggested, three months after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, that Trump would be a great peace negotiator.

==

Let's look at part 2. He was also a dated intellectual on linguistics. The brain is not massively modular, and that was known long ago. But, as far as I know, Chomsky never updated his theories of language and linguistics, but just moved on. The idea of a universal grammar was also put on at least somewhat tentative grounds.

He also, as I note there, got lucky to attack behaviorism publicly on the issue of language development just as it was already caving in. And, by presenting his thoughts as what seemed to be the only option?

Chomsky also was ...

A duopolist on theories of language. No wonder he moved on.

In reality, many of his ideas have been out of date, or at least partially out of date, for 30 years or more. If behavioralism overstate external influences on language development, his quasi-Ev Psych ideas (it's why people like Steve Pinker ran with his "massive modularity" ideas about the brain) understated said influences, and understated both how classical neo-Darwinian evolution could produce gradual, graduated language development, especially in conjunction with cultural evolution.

Beyond that? Carl Zimmer reports that new research indicates language evolved primarily for communication, and NOT for thinking. Fun sidebar? This is another overturning of Chomsky's claims about language. (I can't say "research," since Chomsky did basically none.) Also, this would tie in with people like Michael Corballis stressing cultural evolution's role in the development of language.

 

==

So, non-rhetorically like Marc Antony, I came to bury Chomsky, not to praise him.

And, I have saved an even broader version of this in the hopper, post-dated enough that I can pull out out of storage for when he actually dies, when "the icy hand of death" grips him.

RIP Jim Stiles and good riddance to your cult fanbois

Via a commenter on High Country News' Facebook page, on its story about a Moab developer planning (and now putting on hold) a new development named after Ed Abbey characters from The Monkey Wrench Gang (my take) ...

I heard the news about Stiles, long-time publisher of The Canyon Country Zephyr. His obit, on its website.

A few interesting thoughts, from that obit, and many more after that.

First, he was a true Cactus Ed groupie, if he moved to the Moab area after a friend of his dad gave him a copy of Desert Solitaire.

Second, why did he move to Coldwater, Kansas, of all places? Obit doesn't say. It does say he was born in Louisville, Kentucky. For the unknowing, Coldwater is a far more godforsaken place, at least to the Western White person's eyes, than Moab, and less scenic, too. It's about 100 miles west southwest of Wichita, Kansas, where the mixed-grass prairie changes to shortgrass. It's been eons, but I've been through there, Ashland, Protection, and all around on US 160, as well as US 54, US 400 (the old KS 96), etc. It's under 1,000 people; its whole county, which borders Oklahoma just east of the Panhandle, is under 2,000. It's a town of a bunch of old White farmers, average age over 55.

Third, this ties to the Zephyr. Good old Jim moved to Coldwater BACK IN 2011! In other words, per a Gannett, a Cherry Road, or some other "hollowing out" newspaper company, he was publishing the Zephyr remotely for THIRTEEN YEARS. What a fraud.

Indeed, it may be MORE than 13 years. I quote from this High Country News piece about Stiles in 2006:

We have been on a daylong memory-lane tour that’s a show-and-tell for Stiles’ first book, Brave New West: When Worlds Collide in Moab, Utah, which is under contract from the University of Arizona Press. The book ties together 30 years of experience and observation into what Stiles calls “a chronicle of Moab’s demise.” It is, truth be told, more a chronicle of his love affair with the town. ... 

To Stiles, [Abbey's] trailer’s fate is just another example of all that has gone wrong in the Moab area since Abbey came and went. In fact, three decades after having a “this-is-the-place-I’m-going-to-call-home-the-rest-of-my-life” epiphany, Stiles has pulled up stakes and moved to another town. 

But he hasn’t fled Canyon Country (he asked that I not reveal his new town) and he sure as hell isn’t backing down with The Zephyr. After 17 years of publishing, during which time he has tackled almost every imaginable issue in this poster-child region of the New West, he has found himself in a heated in-print brouhaha with the environmental movement. Specifically, he’s wrestling with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) — a group he once championed with enthusiasm. The resulting fracas has been downright ugly.

So, he had apparently left Moab by then, even if not yet moved to Coldwater, Kansas, and yet kept pontificating for 20 years? In other words, if he started it in 1989, and moved, in let's say, 2004 for some round numbers, that's publishing the Zephyr for 15 years while in Moab and 20 years while not.

(I am curious where he was at from 2006, or earlier, however much earlier, wherever in Canyon Country it was. Paradise? Tropic? Escalante? Or, if his bromance and boner for Mormons had already started then — Monticello? Blanding? Bluff? And why Coldwater? He was born in Louisville, Kentucky.)

Per one person in comments at his "official" obit, which will probably become about as hagiographized as Abbey's, I don't know what will happen to the Zephyr; obviously, if said person wrote a check, and made it out to Stiles personally, it gets returned. But, what if it was made out to the Zephyr?

Per another commenter there, and its online masthead on its homepage, who is running it now? Has it been a semi-ghost ship since the end of 2022? As that commenter noted, to the degree it had comment since 2022, it was a one-man band. And, much of that, per the commenter, in 2023 and early 2024, was recycled old material. (Apparently nobody's running it. Stiles' obit is the top item on the page, and the latest dated. RIP Zephyr.)

It's funny, even the world population clock below Stiles' mug is antiquated. As of the time I started working on this on May 18, it was still below 8 billion, whereas all reputable sites will tell you we've already passed that, by more than 150 million.

And, re the cult of Abbey? The Zephyr's Facebook page is now "fans of," and Stiles gave some insiders admin privileges before he died. It's clear a cult of Stiles will continue to mushroom, like mushrooms do, under a dark pile of shit.

As I said there, per the link up top about the development in Moab, it's too bad a Chuck Bowden isn't still alive to take the last measure of Stiles the way he did of Abbey.

That said, per the post making that announcement? This steaming pile of shit: 

Prior to his passing, Jim Stiles gave admin privileges on this page to a number of his close associates, with the hope that we would keep the page alive and dynamic. His articles going back decades still have great relevance to current events, and in light of the disheartening conflicts over Western lands, his wisdom seems timeless. There is currently a push to create a new national monument that would gobble up beautiful and resource rich lands in western Colorado. 

Stiles' research uncovered many disturbing details about the genesis of the Bears Ears National Monument which was imposed on San Juan County, Utah--against the will of the local people--by the Obama administration in January of 2017. To a large degree the Bears Ears movement was inspired and funded by Swiss billionaire, Hansjorg Wyss. 

It appears that Wyss' is involved with the "Monuments for All" coalition, now pushing the creation of the "Dolores National Monument" which is also vehemently opposed by those who live and work within its proposed boundaries. 

Below is but one of Stiles' numerous articles detailing the involvement of the Swiss billionaire's meddling in western lands issues. If you visit the Zephyr website and type "Hansjorg Wyss" into the search field, you will find many relevant articles.

Which got this response:

Good fucking doorknob. So, the "friends of Stiles" are conspiracy theory wingnuts who support extractive industries (uranium) and (like Stiles himself to fair degree) don't give a rat's ass about actual American Indians? Got it.

Beyond that? I've seen enough on Twitter to know that Hansjorg Wyss is kind of the new George Soros to wingnuts.

Nuff said for now, til we get to some old blog posts by me.

Oh, per that page? This 2020 article about romancing the way of the cowboy? Big ag cowboying today ain't no romance, but, on the Colorado Plateau, it is an extractive industry as well.

OK, now to my old blogging about him.

First, in 2008, at the start of the Great Recession, he was talking about "what America needs." TL/DR? A return to Eisenhower's America. Left unsaid? That America had good White people behind the white picket fences and everybody else was supposed to know their place. Coldwater, Kansas was about right as his final stopping place. That said, not all of it was bad. On the third hand, that Cowboy Bob piece also reflected his Eisenhower America mindset. And, yea, Jim, it IS "welfare ranching" with below-market BLM lease rates compared to what private land charges in the same area. Ditto to your Mormon blowhard friends. More on that immediately below.

Second, a decade later, in 2018, I called him at least half a blowhard. I left open the possibility of full blowhard. I'll split the difference now and call him three-quarters blowhard, specifically because he was already 100 percent full of shit back then about Bears' Ears, as well as being half full of shit about the recreational economy. Per Bears' Ears, and his comments then on its name? He was at a minimum hiding in a Whites-only enclave, and at a maximum, albeit with a different target, as much a racist as Abbey, per my response above to his groupies. (That includes, per the end of that piece, his becoming a Mormon propagandist. That, in turn, explains the flunkies/groupies/fanbois/cultists above.)

Third, in part in response that that, I blogged myself about the creation of Bears' Ears and the Trumpian reversal. As far as Friends of Cedar Mesa selling private tours? Maybe Stiles' Mormon friends were afraid that would interrupt their illegal pothunting, assuming some of them still do it. In his Cowboy Bob piece, he claims the feds are the biggest pot destroyers while claiming the Mormons were just innocents from a century earlier.

From the Cowboy Bob piece:

More than a century ago, when Mormon pioneers first settled parts of southeast Utah, they found these artifacts, thousands of them, abandoned hundreds of years ago, by ancient Native Americans. They found pots and projectile points and burden baskets, metates and manos, and the still intact remnants of their homes. The Mormons, exiles themselves, gathered the artifacts up and they took them home. They were beautiful, no one else seemed to want them, and it seemed to them logical to get them out of the weather. Most thought they were doing something good. Universities even hired the locals to lead archaeologists to the better sites.

Bullshit, refudiated by David Roberts and friends of his like Winston Hurst, who probably didn't color the pages of the Zephyr. (A search has Roberts only showing up once, in a sidebar reference to his Everett Reuss book. Hurst is even more briefly mentioned in one piece.)

Frankly, that was when I lost most remaining respect for him. I guess he forgot to get the new Mormon temple in Coldwater built before he died.

Further confirming my take on this? In my googling about Stiles, I saw an r/Moab subreddit with discussion of this. I posted a link to the 2006 HCN piece and said I considered him a fraud. The next morning, I discovered the moderator, a guy named ReaganCheese (with St. Ronald of Reagan icon, not your standard Reddit kit, showing the groupie this guy is), not only made some Dum Fuq response, but also gave me a flair called "Jim Stiles cucked me." Unfortunately, I hit the block on him before I posted my final edits to my response to him. And, unfortunately, since I blocked him, I don't see a way of reporting him, which I should have done first. I eventually figured out a way to do that, that may have gone to Reddit rather than him as moderator of the Moab site, and that's enough time wasted.

Of additional interest? Despite me telling Jeff St. Clair about it, no Stiles obit at Counterpunch. Nor has St. Clair managed to work in a satirical piece by me about Abbey, Stiles and Bates Wilson — despite saying it was in the hopper. And, St. Clair dropped an occasional piece for HCN in pre-2006 days, as did Stiles.

Texas Progressives talk guns, lies, killings

Greg Abbott "hearts" murderers. #fify on the header, Trib. The Monthly has more. I had nuanced thoughts at the time Perry was arrested, including on the issue of guns in general and Garrett Foster's carrying of his, whether or not it was ever pointed at Perry.

Trump, Abbott lie at NRA convention. Again, #fify on the header, Trib. 

Republicans aren't trying to flip Henry Cuellar's seat because, as the Trib showed in the body text, without using the exact words, "he's a useful tool." 

Semi-Bushie Mat Mackowiak is joining a crowded field to replace Matt Rinaldi as state GOP chair. Best of luck.

The Lege continues to browbeat universities on DEI.

A reminder that Gaza and Atlanta's Cop City are closely tied.

Off the Kuff had some math-related thoughts about the judge's decision to throw out a 2022 Harris County judicial election. 

Speaking of, Kuff still can't talk about the thuggish repression here in Tex-ass of pro-Palestinian protestors at Texas public universities, but CAN talk about Ernie Johnson helping a bar mitzvah.

SocraticGadfly dropped Part 1 andPart 2 about presidential debate fraudulency of last week.

RIP Dabney Coleman, per this Monthly profile. 

RIP Putin flak Russell Bentley, also in the Monthly.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project noted the death of the kind & effective Galveston activist Roxy Williamson.  

Jason Stanford dives into Mike Hixenbaugh's new book about "objective" journalism. 

Deece Eckstein eulogizes the Rev. Bill Lawson. 

The TSTA Blog keeps reminding us that Greg Abbott is the root cause of all the school district budget cuts.  

Kimberly Mata-Rubio will never stop fighting for her daughter Lexi or any of the other children who were murdered at Robb Elementary.

RIP Eddie Bernice Johnson

Or "Peanut Butter and Johnson" as I called the South Dallas AND South Dallas suburbs Congresscritter, who only visited the burbs once in 9 years, and that for a Recovery Act highway project in Cedar Hill. Here's the Trib's obit.

And, my takedown follows.

The biggie? Her running flak for John Wiley Price and Friends of JWP over essentially trying to do a shakedown of Richard Allen over the Dallas Inland Port on I-20 in the late 2000-aughts. The reporting on that, per link in my blog, was some of Jim Schutze's best.

No. 2? Nepotism, and pretty blatant, with Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships.

No. 3? Per the opening graf, her eventual, 2009, discovery that her district included the Best Southwest suburbs. (Those four suburbs made up one-fourth of the district's population. Maybe she thought they were too White, to be blunt? Reality is Lancaster turned majority-Black at or just before I moved there, DeSoto was majority-minority when I moved and majority-Black by 2009, and Cedar Hill was majority-minority by 2009. Reality is, on this, that contra Gromer Jeffers below, little of the bacon she brought home for Dallas went to the Best Southwest burbs; that 2009 "discovery" was to be at a ribbon-cutting for a highway project that was an Obama America Recovery Act project, not her own doing.)

No. 4? Voted for the Iraq War and continued to support it years later.

That said, as noted here, her "throw weight" in the House was long on the weak side, contra the Trib obit. (Also, the Trib obit mentions the bare bones of the scholarship deal, but nothing about the Inland Port.)

She was pretty much wasted space. (I'm sure the likes of Kuff would have a different take.)

==

Justin Miller at the Texas Observer goes stanning for her in his obit.

First, the "EBJ"? Never thought of it before, but surely consciously riffing on "LBJ"?

Second, he salutes her hand-picking her successor. Justin, another phrase for that is "machine politics." Given the scholarship nepotism issue, it's not surprising, but it is bad optics. He mentions some shortcomings, but none by name, while referencing Gromer Jeffers' obit in the Snooze. Problem? Jeffers, while mentioning the scholarship issue, mentions none of the others. Since the Snooze still bats somewhat from the right, Gromer overlooking the Iraq war might be acceptable; Justin doing so by his silence is not. Not covering the Dallas Inland Port? Not acceptable from Gromer, who, even if he didn't want to write about it, knows it. Also, Gromer doesn't note what I observed from personal experience, that she often seemed to see her district as only including South Dallas itself. And, although she might have gotten sideways with Our Man Downtown more than once, nonetheless, she still ran flak for him and his Friends of JWP on the Dallas Inland Port — which the Snooze in general covered badly when it covered it at all.

Interesting, Jim Schutze couldn't take time at his Mike Miles-fellating Substack to write about EBJ.

More interesting, and showing its slippage on anything more than blogging-brief hard level news since (rightfully) booting Schutze to the curb? The Dallas Observer has bupkis. You can still have Simone Carter come up to the Red on PRO Gainesville, but not write up EBJ's death? OK.

==

Side note: EBJ's family is suing Baylor Scott & White over her death. Sounds like even being semi-rich and semi-famous can't get you decent health care in Merikkka.

Kicking Henry Kissinger with a side-kick at Christopher Hitchens

Greg Grandin, who wrote THE book on Kissinger, has the best straight-up, news but realism, obituary.

With people like Hank the Knife, though, my angle is always for the "takedown" obituary, though, and Grandin is a distant second to Spencer Ackerman's work of brilliance. And, I'm not going to try to improve on it.

Beyond Grandin's book, it's good that both obits mention Bangladesh as well as Cambodia. "The Vortex" will tell you all about how Kissinger and Nixon abetted (West) Pakistan's genocide in emerging Bangladesh as well as how we nearly got into a shooting war with the USSR in the Bay of Bengal. It's one of the top two books on modern world history and geopolitics I've read in the past five years. Kissinger / Nixon were likely responsible for the death of even more Bangladeshis than Cambodians, if that's possible.

No, really. High-side estimates for the Bangladeshi genocide run in the 2-3 million range.

And, per this Jeet Heer Tweet, Hank's rank immorality extended to his own Jewish people, willing to abandon them, in the case of Soviet Jews if he thought his own Realpolitik required them to be abandoned. Or, if his will to power required them to be abandoned. Here's the Forward piece to which Heer tweets.

Yes, power as aphrodisiac.

One other note, per the many on Twitter talking about Christopher Hitchens' book-length callout of Kissinger? First, as noted in my brief review, Grandin's book is better.

Second, there's Snitchens' Iraq War rank hypocrisy that sullies his reputation, as shown in his late-life book "Selected Essays."

And, we're going to give him, Hitchens, a kicking while we're here.

I gave him his own takedown obit in 2010. Beyond that?

He was wrong about the nobility of the Kurds he backed.

And, beyond THAT? The big picture?

Snitchens was quite arguably a hypocrite who was not a leftist. And, doing so in some alleged romantic and idealistic nation-building makes it worse, in one sense, than Kissinger.

Veterans Day: In memoriam Hiroshi Miyamura

I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, where the late Medal of Honor winner was born and lived all his life outside his military service time. As the feature part of a newspaper Veterans Day special, I did an "in memoriam" along with reminiscing about life there, aided in part by this great story by the LA Times.

The brick is from a Medal of Honor park where I currently live — which has a Medal of Honor weekend every year — but still has a Confederate statue on the county courthouse square and refuses to promote the Great Hanging site along with Medal of Honor events.

As you can perhaps see in column two, I note the "Nisei" angle. Further on, on the next page of the paper, I mention someone else slightly older, probably about the same age as Mr. Matsutani the postman. This person, while not from Gallup, was from the US Southwest. That would be Ira Hayes. I mentioned him because of racial takes on his alcohol abuse, after Miyamura mentioned racism in the Army, though not Gallup. (Given what I know of Miyamura as a person, I think there was some glossing there.)

I then talk about veterans and PTSD before wrapping things up with more reminiscing of my own childhood in Gallup a bit, picking up from the thread at the end of the first page. It's more than living in the same town. Miyamura lived in our neighborhood, and depending on my exact route of walking to elementary school, I would have gone by his house.

Obviously, this is not a takedown obit, as I often do with famous politicians. It's the real deal.

 

As for Gallup? I tell people that, it's about as close as you can get in the US to a stereotypical developing world, non-urban megalopolis. A lot of non-Southwestern Anglos who move out there (primarily for medical student debt forgiveness by working at the largest Indian Health Service hospital in the nation outside of Alaska) leave as soon as they can. Time issues are one thing. It's not that Navajos, especially, are late. Rather, it's that the conception of time is less precise. That said, in the non-Southwestern world, Country People (sic on spelling out the initials that way) was long that way. 

 

More seriously than that, though. Many Navajos may belong to the Native American Church, but that has just a thin veneer of Christianity over an amalgam of American Indian beliefs. Traditionalist Navajos still abound. Puebloan peoples, on the other hand, such as at Acoma and Zuni, practice in many cases Catholicism, but behind a deeper veneer of that is the religion of their pueblo. (No, different Indian tribes don't have the same religious beliefs; even within the Puebloan world, not all are the same.) Since the 1690s Spanish reconquista never came out to the Hopi mesas, there's not even a veneer of Western monotheism for them, in many cases.

 

Anyway, on that aspect? Miyamura's family went to a Japanese Methodist church in Gallup.

Wrong priorities with Zeus the wonder Great Dane

Don't mourn the death of Zeus, the world's tallest dog, for the wrong reasons. Rather, mourn that we're creating inbred purebred dogs that die before their fourth birthday. Mourn that we've got upper-middle-class people with beaucoup spare money to blow on a dog's battle with cancer, or, if they don't, will start a GoFundMe for a dog when we don't have Medicare for All. Mourn that we've got people talking in terms of the semi New Agey "War on Cancer." Mourn that we have an online new media reporter extending this "furkids" stuff so much that she talks about "his human mother."

I never thought I'd be writing the pet-oriented version of a "takedown" obit, but, there you go.

Ted Kaczynski: Counterpunch vs Jamie Gehrig, and others

At Counterpunch, Bruce Levine says Ted Kaczynski wasn't really mentally ill and Jeff St. Clair excerpts from an old book to paint somewhat the same picture. A day earlier, St. Clair revives an old piece written with Alexander Cockburn about Kaczynski participating (voluntarily) in CIA-derived mind control work while at Harvard, also referenced by Levine.

Especially versus Levine, I contrast Gehrig's "A Madman in the Woods." Ted may not have been criminally insane, but he was nuts, and while an undergrad psych class may have intensified pre-existing issues, he did have pre-existing issues.

And, just because he was not the only escapist near Lincoln, Montana, doesn't mean that he still wasn't off his rocker. (And, maybe that some others aren't, or actually, are, either.)

Also, none of this makes Kaczynski into an environmentalist, hunters' or non-hunters' version. Per Gehrig, he wasn't really that, either.

Having blogged about "Anarchists and Twitter bullshit" earlier today, let's be honest about what Ted was: an anarchist. Anarchists aren't environmentalists, or leftists, or many other things. Like it or not, we can't go back to a Roussellian "state of nature" that, contra Rousseau, never really existed any way. Environmentalism today requires management in some way, shape and form. And, even in relatively non-hierarchical American Indian tribes here in the US before Columbus, that management, whether prescribed burns or whatever, required organization, decision-making, and group cooperation.

Now, the issue of Kaczynski, his family, and his "criminal insanity" legal defense to dodge the death penalty? First, I put "criminal insanity" that way as both reference quotes and scare quotes. In reference quote terms, he did not have such a defense literally, unlike John Hinckley Jr., sent to a psychiatric unit, and later released. I put "insanity defense" in scare quotes because, per Wiki, its definition varies, a bit, at least, from state to state, and much more so, the idea of criminal insanity legally doesn't square with psychological ideas of "insanity," where in fact the word is rarely used today. As for whether Kaczynski had mental health problems, and if so, what they were, per his Wiki bio, while being a genius or near-genius mathematician is not a guarantor of schizophrenia, there are ties to mental health issues on that psychological axis.

As for raising the issue of his mental health to save him from execution? Wiki says that "some authors" suggest his mother and brother did this. It notes that his original public defenders did this, and Ted thereupon fired them. 

Trying to make him a martyr for the cause he espoused with less than full sanity, or for other causes, also doesn't treat Ted Kaczynski on his own terms, or rather, on "neutral" terms, to the degree that, pace Husserl, we can talk about "neutral" terms. 

Update: Leah Sottile, a former reporter for High Country News, offers thoughts about both Kaczynski's and James Watt's deaths at her Substack, Watt first. THIS about his Unabomber manifesto:

The manifesto is about many things; quite honestly, I think any extremist can find something to excite them in the document — from the leftest of lefties, to the rightest of the right.

Is exactly what I'm getting at, and which the gang at Counterpunch took a pass on, to extract "their" point of view.

None of this is to excuse Harvard prof Henry Murray. But, Ted himself said that this did NOT influence him, a flat statement flatly ignored by both Levine and St. Clair/Cockburn. But, it's always easy to turn a dead person into a martyr for something (even if the latter pair actually did it while Kaczynski was still alive.) Wiki also notes (which I don't think I knew) that, while in grad school in Michigan, he had fantasies of sexually transitioning. (It says "gender" but "sex" is clearly what's meant.)

Update 2: Per Oliver Bateman, here's another good angle on Kaczynski that ties directly with his troubled older childhood years: He never grew up. Bateman ties that with the fact that most extremists are similar and "can't accept life's disappointments." (Bateman's piece has its own issues, like claiming history is cyclical and Ted couldn't accept that, either.)

Top blogging of 2022

Yes, we are here. Not because of procrastination, but for other reasons, I delay these blogging roundup pieces by a few days.

Anyway, not all of these were posted in 2022, but they were the most read.

This year, we're doing reverse order.

No. 10 was early in 2022, and was about the truth of the Minsk Accords and related issues in the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the tussles that led up to that. (Well, not all the truth, as it turns out; it wasn't until early December that we learned German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel had pushed them as a way to string Putin out while re-arming Ukraine from NATO stocks.) 

No. 9? My hot take on platitudinous high school graduation speeches, both the student ones and the guest speaker ones.

No. 8 may involve eating crow. It was about the possibility, and more the desirability, of Phat Albert Pujols returning to St. Louis.

No. 7 is from way back in 2004 and started trending again late this summer and I have no reason why. It was about the Snooze, aka THE Dallas Morning News, pushing Shrub Bush to go further right with second-term Cabinet picks.

No. 6 is also old, but trending because it relates to the Jan. 6 committee and I goosed it. It's about felon Joey Dauben, updated with more of his comments about Ali Akbar, aka Ali Alexander.

No. 5 was also from the baseball preseason, in which I urged Cardinals head cheese John Mozeliak to sign Zach Greinke. Early hindsight made me want to retract and eat crow; later hindsight said that, his injury issues aside, it wouldn't have been a bad addition.

No. 4 was a series, not MAGAts, "just asking questions" about why don't we have non-mRNA boosters? Sadly, BlueAnon in general and People's CDC types in particular, choose not to address this issue, rather, just bitching about the Biden Administration and saying (at times) "masks forever" without proposing other constructive ideas. Like pushing the actual CDC for non-mRNA boosters. (Personal note: I got the Johnson and Johnson original and have never been boosted; and, per that post, I think the clotting death concerns over it are not THAT much less than the cardiomyopathy death concerns over mRNA shots.)

No. 3 was my first big piece about the Russia-Ukraine war. The Russian-Ukrainian linguistic division in left-bank Ukraine, Joe Stalin's role in setting Ukraine's boundaries and other issues of major relevance were all analyzed.

No. 2 was my highly irreverent chops-busting of Americans boo-hooing the death of Liz Windsor.

No. 1, like No. 7, was old, and started trending this summer, perhaps goosed by code in a Chinese-language comment that I since removed. It was about the Chevy Volt being an electric lemon.

RIP Ratzi the Nazi

Can't think of many better ways to see the old year end and the new one begin than with the death of Joseph Ratzenberger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, aka Ratzi the Nazi. Yes, I know his Hitler Youth service was forced and he deserted the unit; the nickname plays on his German background to describe his time as cardinal-flunky of John Paul II, yet even further right, and above all his time as pope.

To extend the analogy, Ratzi the Nazi was one of JPII's chief stormtroopers, even a Gruppenführer of his reactionary papacy, gone further than the master.

Ratzi was hard-core anti-gay, as well as anti anything else that didn't fit into his small vehicle of conservative Catholicism. Since his retirement, many of Pope Francis' pronouncements have been seen as shots against those of Ratzi.

And, of course, he did basically nothing about the priestly child sex abuse scandal. In fact, he was part of the coverup. And, part of giving victims the back of the Vatican hand, while already having apologists flock around him like the flies of Beelzebul. He then tried to claim, shades of Uber and Lyft, that abusive priests were, essentially, independent contractors. (Francis, while far better, has not been far far better and is no shining light overall.) Per the obit piece at top link, Ratzi continued to shoot himself in the foot on this issue after becoming pope emeritus.

And, there are many fundamentalists Catholics and Conservative Cafeteria Catholics who can't accept the truth about Ratzi the Nazi, even though the bible itself says "the truth shall set you free," does it not?  

And, while we're going biblical?

Per comments about Ratzi's current locale, there is no heaven, or hell, and no immortal soul, so he's not in any realm of the saints. But, if both metaphysical sites existed, along with immortal souls, per Jesus' own "suffer the little children" plus "it would be better if a millstone were placed around their necks," he sure wouldn't be in heaven. 

As for the priests he defrocked? The apologists won't talk about how much outside pressure was required for that to happen or how many he didn't defrock. And, indeed, many of the alleged 400 were not defrocked but retired (whether totally voluntarily or not). And, in any case, it was not 400 final actions. It was 400 cases opened. Says who? National Catholic Register.

They won't talk about him being part of the coverup, per that link above, and individually as well as institutionally. Per Hitchens' piece I linked there, they won't talk about Ratzi the Pedi wrote a statute of "we've got first dibs" regulation about reporting abuse, as in, reporting stays in house for 10 years — probably hoping that governmental clocks would run out by then. As for the claim that "he did more than previous popes"? That's like sayig the atomic bomb is not as deadly as the hydrogen bomb.

They won't talk about how the Vatican financial scandal grew on his watch. They won't talk about how, going beyond JPII's putting a brake on everything in the way of Vatican 2 reforms, Ratzi actually tried to move that bus backward again, and in doing so, enabled Opus Dei, and Catholic groups and individuals more reactionary yet.

As for Blue Anon types, or leftists for that matter, who don't like the tag? I said on Twitter, too, that I was referencing his time as pope. If you call Mussolini a fascist but reject "Ratzi the Nazi," you're a hypocrite. Beyond all the above, he gave reactionary formal Catholic groups like Opus Dei a degree of coddling that even JPII wouldn't, as I note above. Beyond THAT, given David Kertzer's history of Pius XII's arguably being a fascist, if not a Nazi, Ratzi was chief among stonewallers of Kertzer and other historians wanting to look at Vatican archives of Pius XII. Benedict was also part of stonewalling over the release of official records of Pius XI, about whom, and his relationship to Mussolini, Kertzer has also written. (Catholic fundies refuse to admit this stonewalling is of a piece with Ratzi's other actions.)

Speaking of, Francis has now led Rome as long as Ratzi if not a bit longer, and there's been more and more talk about his health status in the last year. Will he avail himself of the "pope emeritus" idea and if so, how soon?

==

Related thoughts, from old blog posts about Ratzi the Nazi?

How much is Douthat mourning his death, given that he mourned his retirement?

As for him being an unwilling draftee into Hitler Youth? The German Catholic Church remained cozy with elements of Germany's Nazi past even into Benedict's papacy.

Ken Starr dead? Like shooting fish in a barrel, but, while here, I'm firing at both halves of the duopoly

Geez, over the last two weeks, I do a non-takedown but critical obit of Gorbachev, then another one, also non-takedown but critical, over Barbara Ehrenreich, then a takedown of the House of Windsor at the back end of calling out Americans for royal envy paralleling penis envy, over the death of Elizabeth II.

And now, Ken Starr is dead?

A sad embarrassment of riches, and with me having been on press deadline, I didn't have time to jump in the fray.

I sum it up in this Tweet.

Ken Starr will be buried in a blue dress stained with Linda Tripp's smegma. That will be inside an inner sarcophagus made of Baylor rapist green and gold football helmets. That, in turn, will be inside an outer sarcophagus made of Jeffrey Epstein's dollars.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 13, 2022

To expand on that, I recommend this Twitter thread, and, of course, the Rolling Stone takedown obit above.

Per that thread, beyond what I mention above, Starr defended other statutory rapists besides Epstein.

He helped Mitch the Turtle gut and eviscerate McCain-Feingold.

And, he represents everything wrong with the GOP federal legal and judiciary pipeline. As the account notes, Kirkland and Ellis is a kind of breeding ground. Then, as a forming ground, there's the Federalist Society.

Personally, I lived half an hour from Waco, Texas, when the Baylor shit started going down. I first noted how he was running protection for Art Briles, which itself was crappy enough given the way the Bears had previously coddled former basketball coach Dave Bliss from facing his own improprieties. And, I was still in the area when the Baptist non-dancers finally fired him.

Interestingly, as with Gorbachev, I had no tag for him. And, as there, I'm not adding one.

BUT?

We're not ending there.

Since I'm on a roll on semi-takedown obits, we're triangulating off Ken Starr to both halves of the duopoly, primarily the left-hand side.

Linda Tripp was a nutter, especially over Vince Foster conspiracy theories. No denial whatsoever here.

But? Contra the likes of Jeff Gerth at the New York Times blathering about Whitewater for years, then later saying "nothing here," there WERE things there. (Gerth, interestingly, blames NYT editors for the inaccuracies in his reporting.)

In terms of William J. Clinton, aka Slick Willie, vis-a-vis Tripp and Monica Lewinsky, there was of course Paula Jones in his past, even though she was in some ways manipulated by the wingnuts whose legal bidding Starr was too willing to do.

And, there was Hillary making a killing on those cattle futures, as part of a general lack of believability, and not too too long after the Slickster complained about his governor's salary. In my mind, there's no doubt she had help of some kind, and probably something that would meet the commodities futures definition of insider trading or the equivalent thereof. 

As for Starr defending Trump during his first impeachment? Doornknob forbid that I sound anything close to Glenn Greenwald, let alone Cucker Tarlson, but, even if Trump was trying to extort information about Hunter Biden from Zelenskyy, it's not like Hunter Biden was Mr. Innocent.

Both the cattle futures (which happened at the same time as the alleged problems and incidents collectively called "Whitewater") and the Ukrainian stiff-arming? Both reflect the duopoly disease of capitalism.

Related? Don't forget, as Twitter won't let you forget, that Epstein the hypercapitalist had plenty of connections in both halves of the duopoly.

Don't forget that NCAA Division I college football at a place like Baylor is ultimately about capitalism. And, don't I know it, from those two blog posts about Starr's time at Baylor. Had Art Briles been 2-10, his ass would have been sacked faster that a Whitewater minute.

Royals envy: Societal class-based penis envy in America

Going by Twitter, a fair number of British people (probably greater in Northern Ireland and Scotland than England) and lots of "Black Twitter" no matter the country, said "good bye and good riddance" yesterday when Elizabeth II died.

America? Not so much. There's probably some US residents that greeted it with a yawn, but, I venture that, of people who had an "emotional opinion" of some strength on the queen's death, the percentage saddened or whatever was higher here in the States than in the UK, and probably much higher than in other outposts of the British Commonwealth.

Some political scientists have said that most Americans' veneration for, nay, semi-worship of, the US flag is a substitute for not having a monarch. 

If true, it's apparently not enough of a substitute, given yesterday's outpouring.

Didn't we secede from a distant ancestor of hers? Yes.

Aren't we supposedly egalitarian? Supposedly, yes; actually, no.

And, maybe THAT is part of the issue.

Study after study has shown that, at least since the time of Shrub Bush's Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld castigating "old Europe" for not backing the US on the Iraq War, that "old Europe" has higher economic class mobility than the US. Even with the UK having less class mobility than continental Europe, it's likely still ahead of the US.

So, maybe that's it. Royals envy is part and parcel of a class-based society that the US denies it has. I mean, I don't think "working class" White folk, let alone minorities, have this. It's a middle class and upper middle class and beyond issue.

As for Elizabeth? I've already done two semi-takedown obits in a week. No need for another.

I will note that when I dropped this Tweet:

Pictures Charles slipping into visit mother Elizabeth II with something like the docs did for his great-grandfather George V:
"Here, Mumsy, it's just a small shot of morphine to make you feel better and give you a nice, looong sleep."

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 8, 2022

Into a "Monty Python" group on Hucksterman, the only people who liked it were British. (Hatred was from both Americans and British, even though the Beeb mentions the reality of George V's euthanasia in talking about the "London Bridge is Down" transition plan.

So, I noted that I regretted this Tweet, also posted there:

Queen Elizabeth II getting some high-grade BBC at the end of her life? Prince Philip is turning over in his grave!

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 8, 2022

Didn't get the same vitriol and I was sad. (A full roundup of my Twitter snark is here.)

More seriously, and yeah, we're going to go halfway into obit land, with that.

Elizabeth wasn't "as racist" as Philip. (Or as the late Queen Mother.) But, could she have done more re the former Meghan Markle? Yes. It might be one thing to visit Oceania or sub-Saharan African portions of the Commonwealth as its sovereign or its non-sovereign leader, but the "color line" in the royal family? Not so much. And, let's not even get started on Charles' brother, Andrew, and Jeffrey Epstein. Oops, I guess we just did. Yes, she stripped him of titles just a month or so ago, but, this has been festering for a long time.

Otherwise, if you want "class," there's no need to look across the pond. The Windsors are as declassé as the ... well, as the Trumps.

That said, even though she reigned without ruling, Elizabeth did "nudge" here and there. It will be fun seeing King Charles III dealing with the twat of a new Tory PM Liv Truss and her climate-hating government. With their succession to their respective roles separated by only two days, there's bound to be head-on conflict, and given the degree to which Charles has long seemed to have been champing at the bit, I'm sure he's full ready for this.

Speaking of, per Unherd, if British democracy is so fragile, and crappy, today that you're worried about its post-Elizabethan future, isn't that another argument to junk the crown and take a full plunge? Or, to put it more bluntly, in Monty Python terms: If the death of some watery tart with a sword makes you fear for the future of your democracy, then per Samwise Gamgee, you never had much democracy in the first place, did you?

(UnHerd got even worse in its Saturday email blast. Good fricking doorknob, for a bunch of allegedly outside-the-box thinkers, their British contingent is a bunch of royal hand-wringers.)

Sidebar back to the Monty Python folks ... seriously, it's a Monty Python group, not a BBC newsreaders group. You could spoof the death of any living ex-president, or if a serving president stroked out (assassination different) and I'd be OK with it.

==

Update: It's not just Americans, though. Punker Johnny Rotten reincarnated as a royalist ass-kisser. Part of a great takedown.