Time Out For Trump

 "The Dangers of Donald Trump, From Those Who Know Him"
  If you are like me, you may be disillusioned and reading less and less about the American election. No matter the outcome, there will be a massive amount of regret about the enormous amount of time everyone wasted on a man like Trump. Still, it is worth taking a look at what follows.
  The quotation above is the title of an "Opinion" piece by the Editorial Board of the New York Times (Sept. 26, 2024.) Do not discount it for that reason if you are a Trump supporter since they present the opinions of those who know and worked with Trump and who also have a low opinion of him.
   Ninety-one of them are provided and the quotations are arranged in five categories.  A half-dozen are offered here and they were not chosen because they contain the worst things said about him. Look at the paper itself, if you can, since an array of such awfulness is very impressive. 

1.  Administration Leaders 

BILL BARR

BETSY DEVOS

2. The Trumps & Trump INC.

FRED TRUMP

3. Republican Politicians

LINDSAY GRAHAM

4. Conservative Voices

GEORGE WILL

5. World Leaders (even some CANCON)

JUSTIN TRUDEAU

Endless Electioneering

   The Olympic games are being played, the sun is shining and you surely don't want to read or hear any more about the 2024 U.S. presidential election which has been going on for years. Trump started campaigning in November 2022. It is hardly a snap election. 
   I think the U.S. campaigns should be shorter, much shorter. The fact that the 'new' candidate has only about 100 days left, does not mean that she can't be elected since other governments around the world often choose leaders after brief elections. That brings me to the real point of this post which is to present a graph which appeared recently in the New York Times. I hope the authors don't mind since attribution is provided.

Source: 
   "Is 100 Days Enough Time to Pick a Leader? Around the World, Yes." Josh Holder and Keith Collins, NYT, July 25, 2024.

Post Script:
   Less time and much less money should be spent during election campaigns. Perhaps the citizens south of here would be less divided if there had been no Citizens United decision. While I go look for a supporting graph, I will leave you with an example of excessive private donations:
"He has surprised even political insiders with the size of his contributions this year, throwing $75 million behind Mr. Trump’s attempt to return to the White House and an additional $25 million toward Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential run, making him both candidates’ single largest benefactor. All told, he has given $227 million in contributions to federal candidates and political committees since 2020, nearly all to Republicans — a sum that puts him in the top echelon of the party’s donors, alongside far better-known megadonors like Miriam Adelson and her husband, Sheldon, who died in 2021, and Liz and Dick Uihlein."
  To find out who "HE" is, you will have to consult this article: "A Pedigreed Rail Magnate is Pouring Millions Into Electing Donald Trump," Alexandra Berzon & Mike McIntire, NYT, July 28, 2024. [Hint - It's not Mr. Musk]

Beyond the Palewall (12)

 

 I have not done one of these for a while and, although no one appears to have noticed, will again offer some news nuggets, this time consisting mainly of quotations

Quotations: 
   Here are some recent ones that caught my attention. Remember, I am only the messenger.

   "For several years, many university leaders have failed to act as their students and faculty have shown ever greater readiness to block an expanding range of views that they deem wrong or beyond the pale. Some scholars report that this has had a chilling effect on their work, making them less willing to participate in the academy or in the wider world of public discourse. The price of pushing boundaries, particularly with more conservative ideas, has become higher and higher.
   Schools ought to be teaching their students that there is as much courage in listening as there is in speaking up. It has not gone unnoticed — on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large — that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful." ("A Way Back From Campus Chaos," Editorial Board, NYT, May 11, 2024.)

At Harvard, two members of a task force on antisemitism resigned and one said this: “We are at a moment when the toxicity of intellectual slovenliness has been laid bare for all to see,” wrote Rabbi David Wolpe in his resignation announcement. "Should American Jews Abandon Elite Universities?" Brett Stephens, NYT, June 25, 2024.)

U.S. Politics:
"What would fascism look like in America? A quote long misattributed to Sinclair Lewis says that it would come “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” The comedian George Carlin said that it would come not “with jackboots” but “Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.” ("How Does Democracy Die? Maybe By Laser Vision: 'The Boys' and Other TV Series Imagine Fascism Coming to American, Whether Wrapped in the Flag or in a Superhero's Tights," James Poniewozik, NYT, June 19, 2024.)

In answer to the question, "What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?", Nicholas Kristoff suggests, "Offer A Version of Progressivism That Doesn't Result in Progress" (NYT, June 15, 2024.)
   "We are more likely to believe that “housing is a human right” than conservatives in Florida or Texas, but less likely to actually get people housed. We accept a yawning gulf between our values and our outcomes...
   So my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.  
   For example, as a gesture to support trans kids, Oregon took money from the tight education budget to put tampons in boys’ restrooms in elementary schools — including boys’ restrooms in kindergartens.
   “The inability of progressives, particularly in the Portland metro area, to deal with the nitty-gritty of governing and to get something done is just staggering,” Representative Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who has been representing and championing Portland for more than half a century, told me. “People are much more interested in ideology than in actual results.”

There were many from this article, including some of the words in the title: The Blindness of Elites: Walter Kirn and the Empty Politics of Defiance," Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic, May 3, 2024.
   "Kirn would never describe himself as a Trump supporter, but he cares less about Trump’s rampage through American democracy, or even the lunacy and violence of January 6, than he does about the selfish and self-satisfied elites—all noblesse, no oblige—who sparked that anger and sustained it. Call him a counter-elite. As he said about Skull and Bones: “That’s our elite. Who wouldn’t want to be counter to it?”....
   What became clear to me in Montana is that his resentment against the tastemakers and gatekeepers is so unrelenting because it’s fueled not simply by dislike but also by real affection—a sympathy for Americans in unimportant places, people without power or influence, whose opinions and lifestyles he believes are often dismissed as retrograde or irrelevant."...   
   On a fundamental level, Kirn is right. This America that he wishes to dwell upon—and force us to acknowledge—is not what most of us who are invested with access or influence care to deal with. We may say the right things, but our notions of diversity, inclusivity, and justice are extremely narrowly defined. And as the polls keep showing in the run-up to November’s election, Kirn is correct to point out that a growing multiethnic assortment of citizens find themselves more repelled by the status quo than they are by Trump’s return."

Closer to Home:
"In reaction to “the bombshell report of the Prime Minister’s national security advisory committee, in which it is alleged some MPs have been conspiring with foreign powers against the national interest,”...
   And a third is our declining sense of nationhood. The case of the traitorous parliamentarians raises an intriguing question: Is it possible to commit crimes against the national security of a country that does not believe it is a nation and makes no effort to defend its security?
   After decades of entertaining the idea that the whole thing could be wound up at any minute on the vote of a single province, and after years of being told that the Canadian experience was, from the start, a crime against humanity, it’s hard to get too worked up about a little light treason.
    If, what is more, we cannot be bothered to defend ourselves, preferring, as we have for generations, to free-ride on the Americans, can we blame other countries for drawing the appropriate conclusions?f we think so little of ourselves, if we ask so little of ourselves, if there is so little here here, is it any wonder that we should ultimately come to see this reflected in the people who represent us? ("What Else Do You Call It When People Conspire Against Their Own Country?" Andrew Coyne, G&M, June 7, 2024.)

   Canada is the subject of this article in The Atlantic: "Canada's Extremist Attack on Free Speech: A Bill Making Its Way Through the Canadian Parliament Would Impose Draconian Criminal Penalties on Hate Speech and Curtail People's Liberty In Order to Stop Crimes They Haven't Yet Committed," Conor Friedersdorf, June 6, 2024.
   "The "Online Harms Act" states that any person who advocates for or promotes genocide is “liable to imprisonment for life.” It defines lesser “hate crimes” as including online speech that is “likely to foment detestation or vilification” on the basis of race, religion, gender, or other protected categories. And if someone “fears” they may become a victim of a hate crime, they can go before a judge, who may summon the preemptively accused for a sort of precrime trial. If the judge finds “reasonable grounds” for the fear, the defendant must enter into “a recognizance.” This is madness."

   These next two articles are not from Canada and surely they express sentiments not held by any Canadian, but one has to ask if they could even be published in Canada in the very near future.

1. "Jordan Bardella, the New Face of France’s Right: Charismatic and clean cut, shorn of the Le Pen name, the young National Rally leader seems poised to take his party to its best showing ever in European elections on Sunday," Roger Cohen, NYT, June 8, 2024.
   “Our civilization can die,” Mr. Bardella told a crowd of more than 5,000 flag-waving supporters this past week, as chants of “Jordan! Jordan!” reverberated around a vast arena in Paris. “It can die because it will be submerged in migrants who will have changed our customs, culture and way of life irreversibly.”.....   
   Mass immigration — some 5.1 million immigrants entered the European Union in 2022, more than double the number the previous year — is the core issue in the European election, polls show, along with the struggles of French families to make ends meet as the war in Ukraine has driven up energy and food prices.
   In this context, the National Rally has successfully portrayed itself as the home of French patriotism, the party of people reasonably concerned that immigration is out of control.
   With his Italian background, Mr. Bardella has been able to argue that the issue is not immigration itself, but the refusal of many migrants to assimilate. On the left, the very word patriotism in France tends to be viewed skeptically, a first step to nationalism and even war."

2. "This D-Day, Europe Needs to Resolve to Get Its Act Together," Brett Stephens, NYT, June 4, 2024.
   "Demographics: What do Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, his predecessor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and the former British prime minister Theresa May have in common? They are childless. That’s their personal business (and far from representative of all E.U. leaders), but it’s symbolic of a continent where just under 3.9 million Europeans were born in 2022 and 5.15 million died. A shrinking and aging population typically correlates with low economic growth, not least because entrepreneurship is usually a young person’s game.
   Europe has an additional challenge: a relatively high Muslim birthrate, along with the prospect of long-term Muslim migration. Under a “medium migration” scenario estimated by Pew, by 2050 Britain will be nearly 17 percent Muslim, France 17.4 percent and Sweden 20.5 percent. Those wondering about the ascendance of far-right European parties, who are heavily favored to sweep this week’s elections in the E.U. Parliament and who are often sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, know this is a factor. And they need to be honest that the values of depressingly notable segments of these Muslim populations are fundamentally at odds with European traditions of moral tolerance and political liberalism."

  Words such as these, like certain cartoons, may soon not be allowed in Canada and be beyond the pale.

License Plates

 The Renewal of Them
   I just did a post about red light cameras and alluded to the attendant political issues and that reminded me of license plates. We no longer have to get new ones yearly, or even the sticker to indicate we are up-to-date driving-wise. I also thought about them before I recently took a trip out of Ontario and wondered if some alert trooper might notice that my plates appeared to be expired. I realized I could probably stumble through some explanation, or simply say we don't need them and, like most things that have changed, it was because of Covid.
  If you also have difficulty remembering current events and are heading out of province, just take this post along on your phone. The Ontario Government announcement is here and perhaps the title is enough: "Ontario Eliminating Licence Plate Renewal Fees and Stickers" Province is Cutting Costs and Making Life More Convenient For Millions of Vehicle Owners."
  This all happened back in March, 2022 and not everyone agreed with the decision: "Green party leader Mike Schreiner said the announcement is just an election gimmick — the province heads to the polls in June — and the other opposition leaders are "playing footsie" with it. "That is a billion-dollar election boondoggle that means less money for health care, less money for education, less money for affordable housing," he said."
   Like me, many others have bad memories and have forgotten that the plates still need to be renewed: "Police say they are dealing with an “overwhelming” number of unregistered licence plates in Ontario as drivers forget to regularly renew."

   To solve the problem when travelling to other jurisdictions, one could get a vanity plate with a variant of NTXPRD, but they are all likely taken and a trooper might not be satisfied. Plus, it is rather difficult to think of just about any combination of letters that would be acceptable these days and you definitely don't want to display what might be called a "Hate Plate." The rules are found here. There is no "freedom of speech" when it comes to license plates. 

Sources: 
   The Schreiner quote is from: "Ontario to Scrap Vehicle License Renewal Fees, Requirement For Stickers,' CBC News, Feb. 22, 2022.
   The increase in expired plates is here: "Unregistered Ontario License Plates Spike After Renewal Fees Eliminated," Isaac Callan, Global News, Dec. 29, 2023.

"Police say they are dealing with an “overwhelming” number of unregistered licence plates in Ontario as drivers forget to regularly renew.

It is close to two years since the Ford government announced it would scrap the fee to renew licence plates in Ontario, a promise unveiled months before the last provincial election.

The cost to renew licence stickers was previously set at $120 for a year in southern Ontario, with the decision to scrap the fee costing the province around $1.1 billion per year."

Post Script - For the Spelling Police:

"In British English, Canadian English, Irish English, Australian English, South African English, and New Zealand English the noun is spelled licence and the verb is license. The spelling licence is not used for either part of speech in the United States."

Going To Hell In A Handbasket

    While constructing my last post about Trump and the never ending American electioneering, I thought of the figure of speech noted above since, to me, it implies that things are not going well and I think they are not. I didn't use it, however, because I knew that, once again, the post was likely to be too long and it was.
   I looked up the phrase I didn't use and if you do, you will probably be satisfied with the Wikipedia entry, which is a good one. One possible origin has been traced "to the baskets used to catch guillotined heads in the eighteenth century." The Bosch painting above was also found in the Wikipedia essay and it supposedly illustrates a large cart of hay being drawn by "infernal beings that drag everyone to hell."
  I also found a handbasket column by William Safire and you know that has to be worth reading. It was written back in 1990 and apparently things weren't going well back then either. The wife of Harry Reasoner, who you will remember from 60 Minutes, asked Safire about "going to hell in a handbasket" which they had heard "in conversation five times in the past few months."
   The Safire piece is not mentioned among the Wikipedia sources, so I will offer a portion of it here:

   "Lexicographers call this ''old slang'' - a figure of speech used by people who stopped picking up the latest slang about two generations ago. To hell in a handbasket means either ''to one's doom'' or -if used mockingly to describe a small dissipation - merely ''mildly indulgent.''
   The origin is believed to be to heaven in a handbasket, a locution that Dialect Notes spotted in 1913 in Kansas, where it was taken to mean ''to have a sinecure.'' One who was nicely ensconced in an untouchable job was said to be on the way to heaven in a handbasket. When used in Wisconsin a decade later, the term was defined as ''to do something easily.''
   Then the direction changed. The alliteration remained the same, but the first stage of this rocket dropped off and was lost in the sea of archaic phrases; the second stage, with hell substituted for heaven, took us to where we are today: the meaning is ''to degenerate rapidly; to fall apart suddenly.'' The final stage? We cannot tell; down the tubes in a handbasket uses modern surfers' lingo but lacks the alliterative zing.
   What is it about a handbasket - a word rarely used now outside the hellish phrase - that makes it so useful in talk of decadence, degeneration, declension and downfall?
The key quality is portability; the basket is small enough to be carried in one hand, and anything in it is little or light."

Source:
   If you look this up, you will also learn about, "long in the tooth" and "dressed to the nines." "On Language: To Wherever in a Handbasket," William Safire, New York Times, April 29, 1990.
   It was also from Safire that I learned and posted about Genug Shoyn, which is a fitting way to end.

TEOTWAWKI Time for Anti-Trumpers

 

End Time Indeed
   I am spending little time reading about the U.S. election and even less of it reading about Mr. Trump. I admit, however, that a couple of articles about him attracted my attention and I will call them to yours.
   A few of us remain perplexed regarding Trump's continuing and even surging popularity and I am especially puzzled by the fact that he has been embraced by evangelicals and many others who are religious. The two articles are about that and explain the illustration above. I am not religious which puts into context the cartoons below. 

Backward Christian Soldiers
   That the righteous are lining up behind Trump is baffling and, as this article indicates, "The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions," Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2024. (Mr. Edsall's columns are typically very long and he usually asks the opinions of others. Read the entire article since some of the quotes I will use, may not be directly from him.)
  I did not know that "God Made Trump" which is a video on something called "Truth Social."(if you click on that link, it is about three minutes long.) It answers some of the questions, one of them being, "Why Was Trump Chosen?" 

"God had to have someone willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s. The poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump....
God said, “I will need someone who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack. A man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them. I need the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith. And know the belief in God and country.”

God's choice does make some sense since Eric Trump said that his dad "literally saved Christianity" and there is a "growing chorus of voices saying Trump is the defender of Christians and Christianity." 
   He is now seen by many as a "Jesus-like figure" and "The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, “They’re not persecuting me. They’re persecuting you.” That is, "The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God..." 

  That Mr. Trump is not exactly a fine fellow, doesn't matter much since,  “a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role.

  Further, in order to rationalize this quasi-deification of Trump — despite “his crassness and vulgarity, divorces, mocking of disabled people, his overt racism and a determination by a court that he sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll” — white evangelicals refer not to Jesus but the Persian King Cyrus from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible...Cyrus is the model of an ungodly king who nonetheless frees a group of Jews who are held captive in Babylon. It took white evangelicals themselves a while to settle on an explanation for their support, but this characterization of Trump was solidified in a 2018 film that came out just before the 2018 midterms entitled “The Trump Prophecy,” which portrayed Trump as the only leader who could save America from certain cultural collapse."

There is more, but thanks to God, Trump will save the Christians, and America, from the attacks of the deplorable progressives. 

   The second article is this one and it begins when the author, Tim Alberta, tells about his appearance on a television show during which the moderator asks why, 

"Despite being a lecherous, impenitent scoundrel—the 2016 campaign was marked by his mocking of a disabled man, his xenophobic slander of immigrants, his casual calls to violence against political opponents—Trump had won a historic 81 percent of white evangelical voters. Yet that statistic was just a surface-level indicator of the foundational shifts taking place inside the Church. Polling showed that born-again Christian conservatives, once the president’s softest backers, were now his most unflinching advocates."

 The author notes that, As a believer in Jesus Christ—and as the son of an evangelical minister, raised in a conservative church in a conservative community—I had long struggled with how to answer this question.

   Alberta's search to find out "What's wrong with American evangelicals?" yielded answers that were not acceptable to many in his father's congregation and they did not hesitate to let him know at his father's funeral. His criticisms of Trump, were tantamount to treason—against both God and country—and I should be ashamed of myself. By the time of his death, his father probably would have agreed:
Dad had one great weakness. Pastor Alberta’s kryptonite as a Christian—and I think he knew it, though he never admitted it to me—was his intense love of country....
   What I couldn’t understand was how, over the next couple of years, he became an apologist for Trump’s antics, dismissing criticisms of the president’s conduct as little more than an attempt to marginalize his supporters. Dad really did believe this; he believed that the constant attacks on Trump’s character were ipso facto an attack on the character of people like himself, which I think, on some subconscious level, created a permission structure for him to ignore the president’s depravity.

   Things have only gotten worse:

And then George Floyd was murdered. All of this as Donald Trump campaigned for reelection. Trump had run in 2016 on a promise that “Christianity will have power” if he won the White House; now he was warning that his opponent in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, was going to “hurt God” and target Christians for their religious beliefs. Embracing dark rhetoric and violent conspiracy theories, the president enlisted prominent evangelicals to help frame a cosmic spiritual clash between the God-fearing Republicans who supported Trump and the secular leftists who were plotting their conquest of America’s Judeo-Christian ethos.But many of those same people have chosen to idealize a Christian America that puts them at odds with Christianity. They have allowed their national identity to shape their faith identity instead of the other way around.

From: "My Father, My Faith and Donald Trump: Here, In Our House of Worship, People Were Taunting Me About Politics as I Tried to Mourn," Tim Alberta, The Atlantic, Nov. 28, 2023.  The article was adapted from Alberta's new book: The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: America's Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

Post Script:
   I thought of "Backward Christian Soldiers" for obvious reasons. I then googled the phrase and found examples of it. One of its uses is in this, perhaps prescient, book title from forty years ago: Backward, Christian Soldiers?: An Action Manual for Christian Reconstruction, Gary North. [1984!!]
"But if Christians don't control the territory, they can't occupy it. They get tossed out into cultural "outer darkness," which is just exactly what the secular humanists have done to Christians in the 20th century: in education, in the arts, in entertainment, in politics, and certainly in the mainline churches and seminaries. Today, the humanists are "occupying." But they won't be for long. This book shows why." Perhaps a reprint is in order.

  An old friend from out west sent me an email reminding me of long ago and discussions over CARGO CULTS. The subject of the email - Make Melanesia Great Again. He thought the association of  cargo cults and Trump was worth pursuing in Mulcahy's Miscellany and I agreed. But, I took a quick look and the association has already been made. (e.g. "America's Latest "Cargo Cult?", John Edward Terrell, Psychology Today, Aug. 23, 2020.) Plus, undoubtedly a construct like 'cargo cults' has been examined by the neo-colonial historians and any mention of it likely to be frowned upon.

Advice for Anti-Trumpers:

   This will be a useful article as we reach the end: "50 Must-Haves for TEOTWAWKI: A Survival List for When SHTF (S*it Hits the Fan), Countryside, Aug. 31, 2021. This portion will be of interest to the readers of MM:

Books of all sorts, in print: A good library will be important for reference, but also entertainment. Long, dark winters will be a misery for those who don’t attend to a decent library. Without electricity, solar power is a good way to recharge de­vices for digital books, but once the device breaks (and you know it will) that power is useless.

The Cartoons:

These cover cartoons are all by the Canadian, Barry Blitt and are from the New Yorker. For more about Blitt see: Canadian Cartoonists. 

For another MM piece that indicates why TEOTWAWTI is a term for our times see:
"It Is Even Worse Than It Looks"

 

Beyond the Palewall (3)

 

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

                                        News From the Art World

Intolerance Outside the MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE
   There is some irony left in L.A. where the Museum of Tolerance is located and where fights occurred outside the Museum recently because of what was going on inside. You will find a few articles about it in early November. For example:
"Inside the Museum of Tolerance's Screening of Hamas Attack Footage," Josh Rottenberg, L.A. Times, Nov. 8, 2023.
"Demonstrators Brawl Outside LA's Museum of Tolerance After Screening of Hamas Attack Video," Associated Press, Nov.9, 2023.
The website of the Museum of Tolerance is here.
Now, on to a museum that is really tolerant.

Serrano's Piss Christ

The Upcoming Brawl in Barcelona - THE MUSEUM OF PROHIBITED ART
   The Museum of Prohibited Art is a brand new one in Barcelona and, while I welcome it, it is highly likely that others will not. During a time when everyone is highly sensitive and just about anything displayed is offensive to someone, you have to admire the chutzpah of Tatxo Benet, a wealthy Catalan, who is opening a museum dedicated to nothing but showing offensive artworks which have already been censored and previously prohibited. Skirmishes outside this museum are predicted. Apart from controversial sexual and political items there are also religious ones, although it is also predicted that one religion will be treated lightly and there probably aren't any of those cartoons on display. Some titillating headlines:
"Is This the Most Offensive Museum in the World," James Badcock, The Telegraph, Oct.24, 2023. The question:
"Who would dare to open a museum of censored art in these puritanical times, when barely a day passes without news of a work being withdrawn after offending sensibilities or due to the creator's "problematic" persuasions?"
The answer:
"Tatxo Benet, a Catalan art collector, has no such qualms as he prepares to open the doors of his Museu de l'Art Prohibit in Barcelona tomorrow."

"A New Museum of Prohibited Art Shows How Censorship Evolved: When One Person's Art is Another Person's Insult," The Economist, Nov.3, 2023.

"Christ crucified on a fighter jet. Ronald McDonald on the cross. The Madonna in traditional guise, reaching under her robe between her legs. At the new Museum of Prohibited Art in Barcelona, it is not hard to detect a common theme."

Many objects in the museum focus on religion, but not all. Mockery of macho politicians has a way of bringing out the censors, too. Here is Andy Warhol’s Mao Zedong, there a painting of Emiliano Zapata naked on horseback, wearing a pink sombrero and high heels. (The revolutionary Mexican leader’s descendants threatened, preposterously, to sue the artist, Fabián Cháirez, for defamation.) The museum’s main criterion is that works were banned or censored in some way. Tatxo Benet, a journalist-turned-businessman, founded the museum and collected the art."

The website of the Museu de l'Art Prohibit is here, if you dare to look.

Post Script: 

   Although I suppose one can always find in art a bit of politics, today the latter subject is harder to avoid. I mentioned recently that I visited the Vancouver Art Gallery and among the exhibits is "Conceptions of White" which you can view until Feb. 2, 2024. Curious about the reaction to it, I learned that on social media there were some (probably white) who were not happy with it. Among the regular media I have not found much, but will include the references here to help you decide if you want to go to Vancouver. 

   The VAG description of "Conceptions of White" is found here. 

It includes a YouTube presentation by the curators, found here. (13:50)

An article by Lindsay Shepherd is here. "SHEPHERD: An Inside Look at the Vancouver Gallery's Anti-White Exhibit, True North, Nov. 8, 2023. 

(You may remember her for getting in trouble for showing a bit from a TVO program including Jordan Peterson at WLU.)   

There is another in Georgia Strait: "VAG'S Conceptions of White Takes an Uncompromising Swing at a World That Seriously Needs to Change," Mike Usinger, Sept. 7, 2023.

Politics and Gas

   If you glanced quickly at the photo above you probably assumed it was President Biden, particularly if you have relatives or friends who lean toward the right. Similar images of President Brandon or Prime Minister Justinflation are ubiquitous, contagious among conservatives and spread quickly over the Internet. 

   The image is of President Carter and it is displayed in the right-wing publication, American Opinion found in the June 1980 issue. An accompanying caption indicates that:

"No President who has boosted inflation over the 18 percent mark; allowed prime interest rates to reach 20 percent; doubled federal taxation; reduced productivity to minus figures; allowed the halving of our savings; and shrunk the value of the dollar as if it was a prune, deserves another chance to do worse."

   I suppose it is always the case that those who are not in power, blame those who are. The difference now is that the blame, deserved or not, can be spread more quickly and virulently. 

The Bonus:

   This actually is more of a warning. If you recently took on a large mortgage or are deeply in debt, but think that surely interest rates will never get to 5%, look at the one above. It is 20% and the Bank of Canada's key interest rate reached 21.2% in 1981.

Birds Aren't Real

 

   If you count yourself among the credulous and are aware of the evil things which were done by the Democrats in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, then you will know that birds are really drones created by the U.S. government (probably with help from George Soros), to spy on people (particularly Democrats.) So, this post is not for you. It is for a couple of my incredulous and intrepid birder friends, who are too busy birding to read the news. They should know that their Life Lists are full of imposters. 

  Well, not really. Many of us now know that the BAR movement is a huge hoax and if my birder friends happen to hear about it, they will be reassured that birds are real - if they bother to read this blog. Unfortunately, a large number of people do not read this blog and an even larger number have come to believe that birds aren't real and perhaps roost in the attic of Comet Ping Pong. 

   You are likely mystified by all of this if you are unaware of BAR. The notion that Birds Aren't Real was proselytized across the country by the gentleman pictured above starting back in 2017. Since then, large BAR billboards have been  erected in cities, the message has been spread and the movement has grown. Those who are part of the movement realize it is a preposterous parody, but unfortunately there are many members of the public who do not do a lot of critical thinking and they are now trying to avoid the government drones and are still on the lookout for Democrat pedophiles.

  I think the kids should be commended for poking fun at the political discourse of our time and for attempting to "fight lunacy with lunacy." Buy some of their gear and help support the cause. It is interesting that their products, unlike MAGA-wear, can appeal to both believers and non-believers. 

Sources:

   If you begin at the website of Birds Aren't Real, you can buy some of their merchandise and read a false history of the movement. 
   For a recent account about BAR see: "Birds Aren't Real, or Are They? Inside a Gen Z Conspiracy Theory," by Taylor Lorenz, New York Times, Dec. 9, 2021. For an older one see: "The Bird Man: An American Reality and a Fake Conspiracy," by the blogger Rachel Roberts. 
   Although the idea of fake birds is rather bizarre, someone did ask the folks at the fact-checking website SNOPES, if BAR was true. They answered and provide a bibliography: "What is the Birds Aren't Real Movement?", Bethania Palma, Nov. 22, 2021. 
"Is It Satire?
Based on our review of social media accounts and various analyses of Birds Aren’t Real, it seems safe to say that the movement is satire that skewers real conspiracy movements that are built on similarly far-fetched beliefs. But it also captures the zeitgeist of Gen Z, who have grown up in a social-media-driven information ecosystem, in which facts have become partisan footballs."

The Bonus:
  Like most of my posts, this one may not make much sense, especially if you are bewildered by the words "Comet Ping Pong" and have never heard of Pizzagate. About them, see here. 
   I suppose if birds weren't real, we wouldn't have to bother to rename many of them and cancel that horrible Audubon. See: No More Name Changing. 

Sun News Network

    It was on Friday the 13th a couple of years ago that Sun News Network shut its doors. I would wager a large sum that you are not mourning the loss. I am sure you never watched it since it was never part of the basic channel lineup and was found only if you ventured way up among the higher numbers. Besides, the hosts were not particularly appealing and I am sure you did know, without watching, that the views they held were deplorable.

      But, perhaps it would not be a bad thing to have them back and to be able to watch Fox News as well. Perhaps we would all be less perplexed and events would be more explicable if we occasionally watched a different channel. That wouldn’t improve things, but at least we would be less surprised and better able to counter the arguments of the deplorable who may live next door. John Doyle put it very well in his obituary for Sun News:

“The End of Sun News is Both a National Tragedy and Farce,” The Globe and Mail, Feb. 16, 2015. (read the entire article if you get a chance).

   “The mere existence of Sun News was met with outrage from the start. A very Canadian kind of outrage. High dudgeon about “Fox News North” bringing right-wing ranting to Canada. Bless my soul, the True North strong and free could not possibly withstand this assault….”

“We don’t do blunt in Canada. We do tut-tutting. We’re delusional about our media and smug about how broad-minded we are. We’re not broad-minded, often. We’re intolerant of bluntly expressed opinions and attitudes. For heaven’s sake, we’ve allowed Tim Hortons to commandeer our national self-image.”

“I suspect that many who loathed Sun News and now cheer its demise feel that we should have laws against obnoxiousness. The tragedy is the loss of a counterpoint to the existing media establishment. The loss of obnoxious voices, from that of Ezra Levant to Brian Lilley’s comic obsession with the CBC. The tragedy is that a national channel expressing blunt views is now silenced. The tragedy is that there is less challenge to our smugness.”

It Is Even Worse Than It Looks

For obvious reasons during this very long American presidential campaign season, I have been avoiding political discussions generally and political conventions specifically. Nonetheless, I can’t avoid accidentally reading some things and one recent article caught my attention and reminded me of a couple of other related ones which will be quickly summarized before we move on to completely non-political topics. Combined they all mean there is no hope, but at least I now understand why the acronym TEOTWAWKI was created.

First, the title of this post is meant to remind you of a very good book from a couple of years ago that was written by well-respected gents, one from the near right and one from the near left. It is called: It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, by Mann and Ornstein. I think they argue that the American political system was not designed for such extreme partisanship and that one party in particular was to blame  and “unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.” (They name the party, but I won’t do so here so that perhaps you will give their arguments more credence, but you won’t which gets me to those articles I mentioned).

It seems that the usual distinction between facts and opinions no longer makes much difference because Daniel Patrick Moynihan was wrong when he said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  Now that all politics is simply personal and we live in an age of entitlement everyone is entitled to facts of their own and there is no need to argue. But, it is not that simple so I will turn it over to the social scientists and present the concepts mentioned in the articles - such things as ‘confirmation bias’, ‘biased assimilation’ and ‘surprising validators' - which make sense when you think about them and when they are described in simple sentences. Here are some quotes and the sources for them.

- “Social scientists have some intriguing explanations for why people persist in misjudgments despite strong contrary evidence….Basically, the studies show that attempts to refute false information often backfire and lead people to hold on to their misperceptions even more strongly.”
-“...arguing the facts doesn’t help — in fact, it makes the situation worse.” The reason is that people tend to accept arguments that confirm their views and discount facts that challenge what they believe.”

-When presented with facts with which they do not agree,  “Instead of changing their minds, most will dig in their heels and cling even more firmly to their originally held views,”

-“The results show that direct factual contradictions can actually strengthen ideologically grounded factual belief,”

-“ ...attempts to debunk myths can reinforce them, simply by repeating the untruth.  It seems that people remember the assertion and forget whether it’s a lie. The authors wrote: “The more often older adults were told that a given claim was false, the more likely they were to accept it as true after several days have passed.”

I could go on, but the only bright spots seem to be that you might convince a few people if you use charts or graphs or, “if the factual presentation is accompanied by “affirmation” that asks respondents to recall an experience that made them feel good about themselves.” If you use a “surprising validator” to present the opinion, that is, if it is someone trusted with whom the person usually agrees, they are more likely to be convinced. But, as one of the author’s says, “The news here is not encouraging.”

For more information see: “Why Facts Don’t Matter to Trump’s Supporters” David Ignatius, Washington Post, Aug. 4, 2016, and Cass Sunstein, “Breaking Up the Echo,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2012. If you care enough to have read this far you will also be interested in the points made by Kevin Kruse in “The Real Loser: Truth,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 2012. He offers some good reasons why the truth seems to matter less and among them are: a) the fact that there has been a decline in respect for the opinions offered by ‘professionals’ and b) “...most news organizations (with notable exceptions) abandoned their roles as political referees. Many resorted to an atrophied style that resembled stenography more than journalism, presenting all claims as equally valid. Fact checking, once a foundation for all reporting, was now deemed the province of a specialized few.”

It should be noted that an earlier scientist of society (Thucydides) summed it all up in saying “...for it is the habit of mankind … to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”