Decriminalization of marijuana has been good for white tokers, but not so good for minority ones or drivers.

Though it sounds like he were other things going on, the diaper conviction is pretty unsettling and I’m glad it was reversed.

Adam Ozimek links for four studies that he says should have higher minimum wage advocates nervous.

Gotta give these youngsters credit for ingenuity. The commercial at the bottom is kind of goofy, though. (And aren’t such jammers supposed to be illegal?)

The LDS Church and BYU is working to address the tech gender gap.

Excellent!

In an “advice for the privileged” sort of way, this actually seems to largely be good advice.

In Slovenia, they expressly want to prevent smokers from switching to ecigarettes, while over here the Democrats are doing a good job reminding me why I’m not beating down their door right now.

Alyssa Rosenberg’s piece about free speech and smoking in movies is quite good. I do agree that it would be better if we could show less smoking, like I think it would be better if there were other things we showed less of, but the lawsuit needs to be strangled in its crib. {Yes, I’m aware the lawsuit is about movie ratings and not content per se. Even so.}

There may be a whole lot of nudity at the RNC this time around.

An anonymous congressman dishes the dirt, possibly stripping us of whatever earnestness we have on the state of congress. Yes, I will be buying this book. I hope that he uses fictitious states to preserve his anonymity!

I used to take pride in being a psychopath, apparently. On the other hand, if a particular friend hadn’t stayed friends with a particular ex, I never would have met my wife.

Idaho’s decision to drop down from FBS to FCS football was not surprising. The report that lead them to that conclusion is fascinating. I especially find interesting that a variation of my idea for the WAC was sort of taken seriously (sans NDSU/SDSU, plus NAU).

Maybe it’s just me, but I sort of imagine these Russians commenting with a smirk. Also, Trump and Putin sittin’ in a tree…

Benjamin Morris looks at the internationalization of Sumo Wrestling. Uncle Steve comments.

This reminds me of the sweat equity arrangement my friend got in on. Basically he and a bunch of other people all worked together to build their houses. Then they got to move in without a down payment and with a reasonable mortgage.

Source: Tradition and teamwork are awe-inspiring in this Amish barn raising time-lapse | Aeon Videos

Source: Tradition and teamwork are awe-inspiring in this Amish barn raising time-lapse | Aeon Videos

“Jesus Enters Washington” by Joel Pelletier

Tod is kicking off a series on how to fix the Republican Party. Less than entirely interested in getting into the debate Over There, I thought I would briefly share some of my thoughts over here: (more…)

Hey, look, the Phillippines may be electing someone worse than Trump. I vaguely wonder if there is any cultural relationship between this and the Northern Mariana Islands going so hard for Trump in the primary.

Some Pacific Islands are sinking! But maybe not due to climate change.

Halo has been pretty laid back about the coming FDA regs, but now that they’re out, they’re going to court.

This map looks like I would expect it to, with the Northeast ahead of the curve because it’s the northeast and they’ll regulate anything, and Appalachia because they have some of the most pressing problems.

At Unz Review, Anatoly Karlin breaks down Soviet scientists by ethnicity.

A lot of folks on the left talk about Wingnut Welfare, which is the phenomenon where rich right-wingers fund all sorts of think tanks and media. Turns out, BSDI, and lefty outfits team up with the government.

The EPA temporarily debunked claims that weedkillers were causing cancer, before it was quickly retracted.

Some of my rightier friends are getting a kick out of the article on the plight of the college Hillary supporter. Truth be told, I didn’t have it as bad as some did. The left was divided between Gore types and Nader types, the PC of the 80’s/90’s had mostly passed, and the current thing wasn’t a thing yet.

An alternative look at filters and bubbles.

So this is the stuff of a pretty silly sitcom plot: Ten years ago, a taxi driver drove to a TV network for an IT job and ended up on the air as someone else entirely.

It was Amanda Byrnes that really broke me on the subject of celebrity rubbernecking. I really wish Johnny Manziel had stayed in College Station an extra year. It would have been another year of fun.

This… sigh. I do wish that we had a fair and egalitarian way of handling the name thing. My own preference remains for hyphenated household names, he keeps his last name and she keeps hers and names are passed down by gender (by default, but open to mutual agreement).

Is it okay to end a friendship over Trump support? An awful lot depends on the particulars, I think.

Exactly how much does it actually cost Apple to run iTunes? Maybe it’s a lot and maybe Wang is right that they’ll get out of the downloading business, but conflating iTunes with “music downloads” is a bit of a stretch.

I got into a Twitter conversation with Tom Van Dyke about the holdouts on Donald Trump. He took issue with Michael Medved, who said that being anti-Trump is a courageous stance. Tom does not personally care much for Trump, but he supports him as a nominee that is superior to Hillary Clinton. He is, in fact, the only person I know who has waved the #NeverTrump banner and turned. A number of Trump critics have turned, giving those who have said “They will all fall into line” reason to smugly declare themselves prescient. But there is also a historically unprecedented reluctance to endorse the nominee. Enough so that some people, including TVD, are getting frustrated with it.

I am not sure I ever waved the #NeverTrump banner on an official basis. Anyone who has read my writing here or Over There knows, however, that I’m on board with the concept. You never say never, but I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would vote for the man. My views on the matter are really quite extreme. It’s not that I know he would be a tyrant, but I consider it a non-trivial possibility that he will simply ignore all of the institutional controls we have because because he doesn’t respect them. That sounds like rhetorical excess, but I see no reason to believe he would not simply ignore unfovarable Supreme Court rulings, and almost always involving his ability to act independently of congress. A number of Democrats look at Cruz, and Republicans look at Hillary, and say “Actually, they’d be worse because…” and I reject those arguments.

I recognize, however, that my views on this are not normal. And I could be wrong. While I see a tyrant, other people see other things. A number of people on the left have done the thing where they say “If you really believe this about Trump, you would take it to its most logical conclusion” (with the logical conclusion being some combination of never supporting another Republican ever again, and/or disavowing any views on race and politics that liberals find unacceptable, and/or declaring yourself a moral cretin who has been wrong about everything he’s ever said in his entire life). There is some truth to some that, but only if I’m 100% sure I’m right and I’m not 100% sure about much of anything.

Which means that there is, in fact, wiggle room. This cycle, I am not going to be voting for anyone that has directly aided and abetted Trump, or that endorses him. Including those who endorse “the nominee” without naming him. But they’re not blacklisted for life in my mind. My Trumper friends are not going to be disowned. Politicians that make mistakes this cycle will be forgiven with time. This is life in a pluralistic society.

And when it comes to politicians in particular, they have a different vantage point than I do. I am a firm believer that we see in life what our circumstances allow us to see, and many of them are looking down the barrels of the rest of their careers and lives. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

And beyond that, talk is cheap. I may believe that Trump is dangerous, but it’s also easy for me to believe it. It’s also easy for me to believe, as I do, that the politics line up with my personal preferences and that doing anything but distancing themselves from Trump as much as they can will hurt them in direct proportion to how much they fail to so. If I get a false positive, or if I am wrong, I face very little harm. They have reason to ask themselves “Are you sure?” over and over again. I don’t. I want to scream “It’s not that hard, people!”… but it apparently is. If it was as easy, and obvious, as it looks to me, more of them would be doing it.

That brings me to TVD, Medved, and the bravery (or lack thereof) of #NeverTrump. It also helps explain why I grade people on a sliding scale. The more that seeing Donald Trump as I do affects your ability to succeed, the less I expect you to see it.

If you’re an independent commentator, like I am, then #NeverTrump is usually not terribly difficult position to take. Especially for someone like me. It is not a threat to my social circles. It doesn’t threaten my wife’s job. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to be on the outs with my family. There are a number of commentators whose audience is unlikely to punish them for it. The National Review can afford to be anti-Trump. There are other cases, however, where it may indeed be hurting them. There are indications that the Washington Free Beacon, for example, has paid a pretty steep price in terms of readership.

Politicians are a different matter, and not just because I expect less of them generally. Rather, that’s where the consequences become serious. Depending on who you are and who your constituency is, refusing to support your presidential nominee really is a big deal. It is not something that can be done lightly. It’s something almost never done, except by someone with one foot already out the door. Any politician who does that has my respect in spades. It’s the sort of thing I’m not going to forget, even as I have to forgive and forget most of those who do go over the dark side.

The easiest position for a politician to take is to support “the nominee.” If you’re pro-unity, you can look at what Rick Perry is doing and be kind of impressed that he’s eating his own words so vigorously. If someone says that takes guts, I… can’t actually disagree with that. Likewise, I couldn’t be more impressed with Paul Ryan right now. While I appreciate Romney and the Bush family and others, their skin in the game is pretty limited. However much Ryan, Flake, Sasse, and the rest of The Hamilton List can manage to hold out (and I fear they may not, indefinitely), I will appreciate. Too few are. It does take bravery, and that’s in somewhat short supply.

In sum, PT has won four straight national elections – the last one occurring just 18 months ago. Its opponents have vigorously tried – and failed – to defeat them at the ballot box, largely due to PT’s support among Brazil’s poor and working classes.

So if you’re a plutocrat with ownership of the nation’s largest and most influential media outlets, what do you do? You dispense with democracy altogether – after all, it keeps empowering candidates and policies you dislike – by exploiting your media outlets to incite unrest and then install a candidate who could never get elected on his own, yet will faithfully serve your political agenda and ideology.

That’s exactly what Brazil is going to do today. The Brazilian Senate will vote later today to agree to a trial on the lower House’s impeachment charges, which will automatically result in Dilma’s suspension from the presidency pending the end of the trial.

Source: Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

The most obvious victor of Dilma’s downfall is the interim President Michel Temer, former Vice President and leader of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). Though he had been in coalition with the Workers’ Party, at the beginning of April he led a walkout of Rousseff’s government, galvanising the movement against her.

But Temer should watch his step. A Supreme Court judge has already ruled that he too should be investigated for the same charges which have become Rousseff’s undoing, namely manipulating government accounts during the 2014 election to mask Brazil’s growing deficit. The millions of protestors who have been lining the streets of Brasilia, São Paulo and Rio to call for change and transparency are unlikely to be appeased with the replacement of one corrupt President for another.

To confuse the situation further, the man who was third-in-line for the Presidency has also become a victim of Brazil’s corruption purge. Eduardo Cunha, former Speaker of the lower house, was suspended on Friday after being implicated in the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation of the state-owned oil company Petrobras. He is accused of taking $1.4 million in bribes. Cunha, a fellow member of Temer’s PMDB, is one of the most unpopular politicians in Brazil, and showed his cards in December when he approved impeachment proceedings against Rousseff but not against Temer, although they filed at the same time.

Source: The end for Dilma Rousseff, a new era for Brazil? – CapX

I have to be a little skeptical of Emmett Rensin’s essay on “The Smug Style in American Liberalism” because it captures almost exactly how I feel. I’m tempted to offer some pithy quote and say “read the whole thing.” But that’s boring. Instead, I’ll offer three counterpoints to his piece. Rensin attributes too much power to the style. Rensin’s evidence is dangerously anecdotal. Rensins does not sufficiently acknowledge competing “smug styles.”

Rensin’s argument.

Since the end of World War II and especially since the 1960s, liberals in the United States have increasingly adopted what Rensin calls a “smug style” that turns off people who might otherwise be inclined to support liberals’ programs. This smug style is found when liberals insist they know better than those who might disagree with them on any number of issues or policies. This “knowing better” specifically targets the white working class, according to Rensin. Disagreement with putatively liberal policies stems at best from an undue attachment to less important concerns like “guns and religion” and at worst from base motivations like racism or sexism.

Counterpoint No. 1: Too much power to the style.

For the most part, Rensin is discussing a style and not a substance. It’s not so much what liberals advocate as it is how they go about it. “I am not suggesting,” he says, that liberals “compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice.” He’s more concerned about the role smugness plays in alienating potential allies.

Still he hints that smugness leads to the adoption of harmful policies. He claims that “open disdain for the people they [liberals] say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.” However, he doesn’t elaborate on what this means on a practical level.

I therefore wonder if he–and I–perhaps assign too much power to the “smug” style as a style. Even though I can think of specific policies–even policies I support like Obamacare–that in some ways hurt workers, at some point we have to leave off pointing out smugness and engage in accounting for why and how those policies are harmful.

Counterpoint No. 2: Rensin’s evidence is of necessity anecdotal.

With a couple exceptions, Rensin wisely eschews psychoanalyzing liberals’ latte-drinking inner demons. He focuses instead on what liberals say or what is said in favor of causes liberals presumably support. His examples are many, taken from Facebook and Twitter feeds, excerpts from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and other venues.

All to the good for his argument. But the anecdotal nature of his evidence limits what he–and we–can say about liberals’ smug style. First, there’s the problem that what is smug for me may not be smug for ye. Sometimes a joke is just a joke and a barb is just a barb. (And for the record while I can’t stand Stewart’s schtick, I really enjoyed watching the Colbert Report, which is even more unrelenting in its critique of a certain brand of American conservatism.)

More important, we see what some people say on Facebook, but not how those same people interact with others in real life. We see what Stewart does and guess to whom his jokes are meant to appeal, but we don’t see the other things the audience laughs at or how they act when they’re not consuming his brand of entertainment.

Rensin’s argument almost has to be anecdotal. It’s not wrong for being anecdotal. And it’s hard in any systematic way to get at what he’s trying to get at. But we–especially those of us inclined to agree with him–should beware of how far we’re taking the evidence.

Counterpoint no. 3: Other styles compete with liberals’ “smugness.”

Early in the essay, Rensin says, “Of course, there is a smug style in every political movement: elitism among every ideology believing itself in possession of the solutions to society’s ills.” But he mostly lets that recognition drop right there. He quickly redirects the reader to liberal smugness: “few movements have let the smug tendency so corrupt them, or make so tenuous its case against its enemies” as American liberalism.

But let’s dwell a little more on the “smug style in every political movement: elitism among every ideology….”

There’s a libertarian smugness, often called glibness or glibertarianism. While I’m not a libertarian, one libertarian-lite policy I have endorsed is a good example of this. I once advanced the opinion that when considering wages and hours regulations (but not health and safety regulations), I prefer the policy that creates more jobs, if bad ones, to the policy that creates fewer jobs, if better paying ones. While I insist I adopted that position out of sincere concern for people less fortunate than me, I can certainly see how someone who works at or near minimum wage would see my position as smug or glib. At any rate, I’m not going to offer my opinion, especially when it’s unsolicited, to the many service workers I encounter. And if I did offer the opinion, I would be inclined to do so apologetically and in the spirit that I don’t really know what their life is like.

Adherents to non-libertarian conservatism can exhibit “styles” that approach something we can call smugness.

Two examples. One: We’ve all heard the “hate the sin, love the sinner” aphorism. On one level it’s offered, I submit, sincerely, in the belief that we all sin and fall short of the glory and that persistence in sin is detrimental to one’s well-being, perhaps more akin to a sickness deserving compassion than to a crime deserving sanction. But alas, as a slogan it has often accompanied attempts to promote “gay conversion therapy” or to deny the right to same sex marriage.

Two: We don’t have to go back too far to remember that voicing skepticism about the 2003 Iraq invasion signaled to some people that one was at best naive or worse, less than patriotic or supported terrorism. The opponents to the war gave their (sometimes inexcusable) tit to the neo-cons’ tat, but that element from the pro-war side was real, too.

Do religious posturing against gays and pro-war patriotism-baiting count as “smugness”? I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it’s a brand of “knowing better” and dismissing dissenting views similar to the smug style Rensin describes.

But seriously, “read the whole thing.”

As I said above, I agree with Rensin. I don’t do so grudgingly, but gladly. He’s got it right. He uses evidence and logic to come to a conclusion that works for me and that I was inclined to accept in the first place. Therefore on one level, you might read this long post merely as an exercise in finding holes in another person’s argument. And frankly, Rensin could not have addressed my points and still written something readable.

But on another level, I do think those of us most eager to find a “smug style” among American liberals need to consider why the very smugsters we criticize might take exception. The goal isn’t only to win, to see our side through to its notion of the good and the just. It’s also to understand and live with each other because in my view that is part of the good and the just as well.

In recent years, the term “neckbeard” has become perjorative short-hand for “undesirable dude.” Not just undesirable in the sexual sense, but in the social as well. When Ricochet’s Jon Gabriel tweeted about seeing a bunch of neckbeards at a comic book shop, it was pretty much assumed what he meant. Male losers. It relates, directly or indirectly, to ungroomed hair growth in the neck area. We can infer from that that this is not someone who takes care of their appearance.

Why the neckbeard? Mostly the process of elimination. Things like traditional stubble, messy hair, and so on have become intentional adornments. Other things, such as obesity or general ugliness, it’s considered untoward to comment on. A neckbeard, though? That’s a deliberate choice. Losing weight is hard, and most of us know at least someone that has struggled with it. But shaving your neck isn’t. If you can’t even do that, then you obviously don’t care about your appearance and contempt cast your way is therefore to some degree earned. So we can, with that one combined word, describe someone’s attitude towards their own appearance. Very handy.

I’ve hated neckbeards since before hating neckbeards was cool. I have a very fertile neck, as far as that goes, and I therefore shave it at every opportunity. Regular stubble can be an affectation, but neck hair almost never looks good (and especially not on someone like me that has a thick neck even when I’m thin).

Sometimes, though, a neckbeard isn’t really a neckbeard. Sometimes it’s okay. Sometimes it goes completely unnoticed. When does it go unnoticed? When it’s on this guy.

Thats Stephen Amell, who plays Oliver Queen, the title character on the TV show Arrow. He doesnt shave his neck, but people dont seem to especially notice. Ive had the conversation on more than one occasion. A friend commented how much she likes Oliver Queens beard. I ask whether she means the Van Dyke from the comic or the neckbeard from the TV show. Confusion follows because what neckbeard?

Now, granted, Amell doesnt have a full neckbeard. But like me he has a fertile neck, and in any given scene the hair on his neck will match the hair on his face, and neither are usually clean. He does the stubble thing, which is hip. He also does the neckbeard thing, which really only works because he looks like Stephen Amell. I suspect that, on the face of a perhaps chubby comic book nerd, thats what Gabriel was looking at in the comic book shop. In short, if you look like that fellow on the left, you can’t pull it off. If you look like the fellow to the right, you can:

 

One of the reasons that Taidengu is more likely to be criticized than Amell is because it’s more noticeable on account of their respective frames. The smaller your neck, the less noticeable it genuinely is. Which is the case for a lot of things. Though Elizabeth Piccuito informs me that this is no longer the case it once was, thanks to capitalism, it seems that fashion trends for women are geared very heavily towards those that have the best figures. Which is to say trends seem to go specifically towards those outfits that compliment the fewest number of frames. While that’s commercial and this is physical, it is nonetheless a noticeable truth that if you look good in a traditional way you can get away with a lot more than if you’re on the fringe.

This came to mind a day later with Nob Akimoto commented that being able to dress down is a form of privilege. It was, I believe, in reference to Bernie Sanders and the White House Correspondence Dinner. I believe that’s actually quite right, and for a lot of the same reasons that Stephen Amell doesn’t need to worry about shaving the way us mere mortals do.

Amell can afford people criticizing his neck – if they even notice – because he is so otherwise good looking. Someone like Bernie Sanders can get away with acting low-class because he is a very important person. It’s just an affectation! It’s just Bernie being a man of the people! Which is all fine and good, but these are only assumptions we make because we know that he could wear a tux and doesn’t. Someone else who doesn’t wear a tux we might make other, less populist, assumptions about.

Sheila Tone made a similar observation about being able to dress her oldest child (then her only child) in ragmuffin attire. She said it years ago, on a site that has since been taken down, but it’s stuck with me all of this time. I can dress Lain however I want. I can get clothes from goodwill. If she is so inclined, I can let her go out in her underwear. No one will make assumptions about us. No one will call the CPS worried that we can’t afford decent clothes. People might look at her and determine that we are bad parents, I guess, but not in any threatening way. We can chalk it up to eccentricity.

So what does all of this mean? Is Stephen Amell required to shave like us mere mortals? Does Bernie Sanders have to wear a tux? Or do we stop criticizing everyone else? Is that desirable or even possible while trying to maintain cultural standards? Are cultural standards themselves the enemy? Is it desirable or possible to live without them?

When I was young and single, I was a sucker for work shirts. You know, Habib shirts, like from on Married With Children. I never found a true Habib shirt, sadly, but I had several with a lot of names, some Anglo and some not. You could get three for five dollars. For a college kid on a limited budget, that was really cool. They were certainly cooler than “1992 Charity Fun Run” shirts for the same price. I can lean on my comparatively limited funds and being truly frugal at the time. I would feel extremely self-conscious wearing them now, though, and not without reason.

There are no broad answers, of course. It goes to the question of the value of social norms, for which everyone has a different answer both broadly and in individual instances as well. When Bernie refuses to wear the tux, is he running interference for those that can’t or is he inadvertently mocking them for a judgment from which he is comparatively immune? Is Stephen Amell being “normal” with his lazy shaving habits, or is he doing with his face what an attractive woman might do with a particular bathing suit: Only I can pull this off. What is the intention, and what is the reception? To what extent do they even think about it? To what extent is it their responsibility? And to what extent is all of this just urinating into the tornado of the inequities of life and society?

Taidengu Photo by Thaadd
Stephen Amell Photo by Gage Skidmore

The American Republic will end someday. That isn’t a particularly novel or edgy observation. It’s quite banal. “Greece fell, Rome fell….” (China hasn’t fallen yet, but its longest lasting dynasties seem to have a shelf-life of “only” a few centuries, so maybe that counts.)

For me the question is when, not whether, the Republic will fall. I don’t know if a Trump presidency will bring about the fall, but it might. Or it might set the Republic on the course toward its fall. Maybe Trump would do it with a bang so loud we’ll know it’s happening.

Or his election will be one more step in legitimizing a “church and king” faction that perhaps has always been latent in American political politics.

Legitimization is not a yes or no proposition. It happens by degrees and in stages. A formal nomination by a major party can legitimize this faction even if the nominee will never win. I’m not the first to make the comparison, but while here was no way Jean-Marie LePen was going to win the French presidency in 2002, getting to the runoff gave him and his constituency a big boost. If that analogy holds for Trump, then his presumptive nomination is a bad thing indeed.

But maybe t the Republic has already fallen. This “church and king” faction–well, maybe it’s not a faction, maybe it’s a “style” of politics–certainly had its antecedents.  Maybe the deal was sealed at some point. Maybe Wickard v. Filburn. Maybe Korematsu. Maybe the Cold War national security state and military industrial complex. Maybe the Espionage, Sedition, and PATRIOT Acts (or maybe the Alien and Sedition Acts). Maybe the milling factionalism in our politics and the thousand pinpricks into civil society and individual privacy and democratic governance that might very well be the inevitable consequence of what some call “modernity.”

I once attended a presentation by a professor on Augustus and the end of the Roman Republic. According to him, when Augustus seized and consolidated his power, he did so on the fiction that Rome was still a Republic. Romans still spoke as if they lived in whatever had passed for a Republic ca. c.e. 0. But they also knew who was calling the shots. It was only in retrospect that people saw his reign as the beginning of something new.

Trump is no Augustus. Or at least I don’t think so. I don’t fear or dread Trump as much as the #NeverTrump people seem to. If his nomination–and possible election–augur ill for us, it’s one step of a process that depends on decisions we have already made and on decisions we will make in the future.