A New Theory of Democracy?

Note: Tomorrow is Friday, so please send mailbag questions: Post below or email to rcseverian at protonmail dot com. Thanks for your continued diligence in striving to increase quality outputs.

I had nothin’ this morning, so, as is my usual practice, I took a look at the usual hives of scum and villainy. Where I came across this:

We need a new theory of democracy — because this version has failed

It’s Karen: The Website, from last August, and on the one hand it’s the usual litany of Orange Man Bad. But on the other hand, sometimes they provide insight despite themselves (that’s why I check). So I read on, hoping to learn — at the minimum — just what exactly Karen considers “democracy.” Because as much as they chant it — “Democracy” is one of their Power Words — I still don’t really understand what it is they think it means.

But also because I, too, have been contemplating alternate theories of government of late. I’m not 100% droolingly enthusiastic for Operation AIPAC Fury, which according to the Ace of Normies crowd means I’m a Nazi (these days, the dude can’t hardly go a single post without calling someone a Nazi). And I figure hey, I guess if I’m going to be there no matter what I do, I might as well learn about my new comrades in arms. So I checked out their 25 point program, and I gotta say, I’m liking the cut of their jib. For example:

Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest and must be regarded as being subject to foreign laws.

Given that Bad Orange Man — who is not a Nazi by the Ace standard, because he’s bombing Iran on Israel’s orders, but who is a Nazi according to the Left; politics is confusing — is just now losing a Supreme Court case about “birthright citizenship,” in which they’re about to decree that anyone who manages to drop a tadpole on our soil is now and forevermore a 100% True American, this speaks to me.

The right of voting on the state’s government and legislation is to be enjoyed by the citizen of the state alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, shall be granted to citizens of the state alone.

I guess that’s not just a Current Year problem then. The difference being, back in 1920 “the state” was a pretty malleable concept, at least in Germany. In 1920, there were still plenty of living people who came to adulthood as subjects of the Margrave von Farting-Shittenburg, got incorporated into the Kaiserreich, saw its defeat in war, and found themselves “citizens” — whatever that meant — of this bizarre thing called “The Weimar Republic.”

But still: The idea that only the Citizens of the State should vote on matters of State is so blindingly obvious, I can’t believe anyone would even have to write it down, much less make it into an enumerated demand in a political platform. I wonder if Homey’s “new theory of democracy” addresses this — the idea that the “demos” part of “democracy” is meaningless if literally everyone can participate?

All further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.

This is, mutatis mutandis, the most sensible proposition ever put forward by a political party in the history of governance. I guess Ace is right; I’d vote for these guys.

The first obligation of every citizen must be to work, either mentally or physically. The activities of the individual must not conflict with the interests of the general public, but must be carried out within the framework of the whole and for the benefit of all.

We’re going to stop at this point, because we’ve reached an inflection point. This is the point where Liberal Democracy (for rhetorical convenience) fails: It’s aces (heh) at assigning obligations to the State vis-a-vis the Citizens, but weak to nonexistent in spelling out the Citizen’s reciprocal obligations to the State.

The modern version, of course — the Karen version — simply wouldn’t grok the idea of reciprocal obligations. To Karen, the State exists to distribute the gibs. Exists as a practical matter, I mean, insofar as Karen considers practice; in reality, to Karen the State exists primarily to provide a captive audience for her self-actualization. Karen is incapable of second-order thinking, so it never occurs to her to wonder where the gibs come from, and what happens if they stop.

But since we are capable of second-order thinking, comrades, it might behoove us to consider that this might, in fact, be the point at which talking about “the State” first starts to make sense: When a society starts to define, however nebulously, a set of reciprocal obligations vis-a-vis its ruling machinery.

Does it make sense to talk about, say, the English State in the time of Edward I? Certainly it was governed. We can describe more-or-less permanent administrative structures. But the actual governance — the individual acts of governing — were probably still all personal. Edward I probably knew all his tax collectors personally. He certainly knew all his aristocracy personally, and his governance came in the form of personal relations: Whatever the Duke of Earl did for the “government,” he did because of his personal obligations to Edward I, the man.

Could you provoke a crisis of conscience in the Duke of Earl? Could you convince him that what Edward I, the King of England, wanted to do was against the best interests of England, the realm? Could you meaningfully speak to him about England’s interests, as opposed to the personal interests of Edward I?

On a more basic level, could you field troops for “England”? Could you set up a recruiting booth, pitching the notion that “England’s” interests were at stake in the ongoing French wars, and you should sign up For King and Country? Could you meaningfully speak of an “Englishman’s” duty to defend the realm? Not “go fight that French raiding party which just landed,” but to go fight them in Champagne, in the parlance of our times, so we don’t have to fight them in York?

I don’t know. The only time I know for sure that this worked was in Revolutionary France, where la patrie en danger rallied ordinary citizens — a new idea at that time* — to the colors.

*Supposedly a hollaback to the citizens of the Roman Republic, of course, but clearly and intentionally different.

In Revolutionary France, at least, a theory of the State was in effect: Both State and Citizen had obligations to each other; so much of Revolutionary politics consisted in spelling them out. Was that applicable before the French Revolution? I don’t know. Not even in the case of America, where citizenship was determinedly local — the sense of citizenship of, say, Virginia was quite strong (witness Bob Lee’s decision to join the Confederacy, 100 years later), but the sense of “American” citizenship quite weak.

The idea of mutual citizen-State obligations reached its peak with the Soviet Union. The State’s obligations to the citizens were, of course, purely theoretical in the USSR, but on paper, at least, the Soviet State had endless duties to its citizens (and of course the State was supposed to be temporary), and they to it (which the State enforced with an iron hand).

I must’ve read a hundred thousand words from Karen: The Website, comrades, from dozens of different authorettes, but I still have no idea if they think the “citizens” of Our Democracy ™ have any obligations to the State at all. Indeed, it’s Alanis-level ironic, how they seem to believe that the American State is very close to what the Soviet State was intended to be: The mere administrator of things. We all “participate” in Our Democracy ™, but participation seems to boil down to slight adjustments of the gibs vector.

Let’s see what this goofball has to say:

A ccording to polling data, 62 percent of Americans favor the government being responsible for the health coverage of all people in the country. Sixty-five percent of Americans polled favored the infrastructure bill passed during Joe Biden’s presidency. In a poll taken just last year, 63 percent of Americans wanted to increase trade with other countries, and 75 percent worried that tariffs would raise consumer prices. Another poll found 83 percent of likely voters, including 80 percent of Republicans, supported providing federal housing assistance after a natural disaster.

That’s the first paragraph, and you know where he’s going:

Yet in 2024, a near-majority of voters chose a president who would not only not improve medical access, but would adopt a policy to

blah blah blah, you know the rest. The “problem” — which is really just a basic aspect of the human condition, that it takes a lot of college not to understand — is that, as the old saying has it, if wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets. Since music appreciation is a kind of Quality Learing, some kayfabe seems appropriate here:

Gosh that’s a pretty song, and musically pretty interesting too. When’s the last time you heard a harp in a pop song? Plus that opening snare hit — it’s perfect. Of all Brian Wilson’s many talents, “doing a lot with a little” is among the more underappreciated. Dennis Wilson wasn’t much as a drummer, but Brian got the most out of him. And say what you will about the Boomers, any culture that could make “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” into a giant hit — #8 in 1966 — had to be pretty great.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: Poll questions about “the government being responsible for the health coverage of all people in the country” and whatnot are like the Beach Boys asking “Wouldn’t it be nice?” They simply don’t translate into reliable voting behavior. Political “science” has known this since forever…

…which goofus actually goes on to detail:

Terms like “ignorance” and “low-information” are often used to describe much of the electorate, but ascribing Trump’s election to voters not knowing who he was or what he stood for is not credible. Indeed, it runs afoul of the entire basis of both political science and economic decision-making: the rational choice model of human behavior, whereby people are assumed to understand their own material interests.

People aren’t rational, dipshit. He pads this out with a whole bunch of silly stuff about the 1890s, Project 2025 (because of course, and hey, how’s that going? have they implemented all 463 bullet points or whatever, as Karen swore up and down they were going to do?), and so on, but it all boils down to “we lost because the voters are too stupid to see how great we are.”

Or… well, I suppose we must be fair at this point, comrades. Maybe the voters are rational; it’s just that they have a different sense of their own best interests. I admit I have a hard time with this, because I spent a lot of time in Academia, where for various boring, irrelevant reasons I came to know a few Labor Historians.

If you didn’t know that Labor History is a thing, consider yourself lucky. I don’t know how it works in Europe, but in America, Labor History devotes itself exclusively to the question “Why wasn’t there a Communist Revolution in America?” It starts from the premises that a) Communism is self-evidently the best thing for The Workers, and b) America was full of Workers, and therefore c) the only reason The Workers didn’t Revolt and make benefit glorious Socialist paradise was something something false consciousness.

That The Workers don’t think of themselves primarily — or at all — as “The Workers” never crosses their minds, because why would it? They’re so obviously The Workers, in the same way the Democratic Party’s policies, whatever they are at this exact second, are so obviously correct, and so on. They — labor historians, and by extension goofballs like our author — just can’t grok that self interest takes many forms. See also: What’s the Matter With Kansas?, in which Thomas Frank (whose dissertation work was on Advertising, natch), asks why those Bible-thumping, cousin-humping, NASCAR-watching rubes just can’t see how great abortion, degeneracy, and socialism are.

“Material interests,” as he would have it, are a small part of a person’s world. Or a normal person’s world, anyway. Leftists are obsessed with stuff, as we’ve all noted many times. In fact, if you take “luxury beliefs” to fall under Conspicuous Consumption — and how can they not? — there’s a two-word definition of Leftism, right there. Whatever The Current Thing is, it boils down to Conspicuous Consumption.

And that right there was the genius of Fascism, comrades. They pitched it as an economic arrangement, precisely to those voters who would give Thomas Frank et al a chubby: vote for us, and your immediate material needs will be met. In Weimar, where all the voters had lived through the Turnip Winter, that was a serious incentive. But they also pitched it at a much higher level. When Chef Boyardee said “all within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State,” he wasn’t talking about economics. He was talking about meaning. He wanted people to find personal meaning within their mutual obligations to and from the State.

You know, this:

The activities of the individual must not conflict with the interests of the general public, but must be carried out within the framework of the whole and for the benefit of all.

We — normal people — cringe at this, because we find our meaning the old-fashioned way: in our families, churches, communities, and so on. In war-torn Europe, though, where families, churches, and communities all died in the trenches, this made a lot of sense.

The point, comrades, is simply that people aren’t cells on a spreadsheet. Political “scientists,” because they’re a subset of Leftists, simply can’t grasp this. They’re ideologically committed to the idea of people as interchangeable production- and consumption-units, and so are wedded to the idea of “rational choice,” where “rational” can only mean “economic.”

He then goes on to suggest that Fox News might be to blame, because of course he does. But then dismisses it, for the most hilarious possible reason:

To the extent that calculated mendacity delivered through the media can swing elections, the implications are grave for democratic theory. If there is no “marketplace of ideas” where one can objectively shop in the manner of comparing prices at Home Depot versus Lowe’s and, instead, insidious manipulation determines outcomes, then human beings are no more capable of exercising free will than so many laboratory rats.

Lab rats, you say. This from the guy who just wrote a whole big thumbsucker about how the stupid voters are voting to — and this is a direct quote — “deny themselves medical insurance.” Which according to “rational choice theory” they simply should not be able to do. Those stupid rats are doing it wrong.

Just suppose that the great majority of Trump voters are not oblivious or deluded, that they more or less understand his policies and like them, as well as his performative cruelty, vulgarity and general jackassery. In that case we can assume that his epic corruption, so blatant it would make Boss Tweed blush, doesn’t bother them. We can also suppose that his violent language that usually results in death threats does not trouble their consciences, as it retaliates against people his voters regard as evil or even demonic.

Trump supporters may value these qualities in a politician more than whether he tries to provide them health care or education, things that may poll well only in isolation from other priorities

Ah yes. One begins to see the real problem with Our Democracy ™ — it’s the demos. Which has an obvious solution, one Bertolt Brecht recognized all the way back in 1953:

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

I believe that willful, conscious and knowing support of Trump and his policies is a greater factor than conventional wisdom would have it, and more likely to have been politically decisive than accidental or zombie-like support.

And there you have it! You know what’s coming, so I’m only quoting this because I want to make Alanis’s cooter explode:

This possibility has unpleasant implications, as it suggests that your neighbor or work colleague might not be unduly troubled if you are hauled off to prison for a social media post or deprived of your pension for being photographed at a demonstration. 

In all seriousness, though, let’s run with this notion that Trump is a reflection of us; that we’ve gotten the government we deserve. Leaving his Big Middle East Adventures aside, and focusing solely on his domestic policies, is it not fair to say that Trump has reintroduced the notion of mutual responsibility between State and Citizen? However partially, however crudely, he seems to approach The Government as something other than a distribution node for gibs. I haven’t heard him use the word “accountability,” but isn’t that what a lot of it boils down to?

He’s one of the Bobs from Office Space. He has posed an unanswerable question to so much of the Apparat:

Indeed, he’s asked it of… well, I can’t say “of the citizenry,” for obvious reasons, so let’s say he’s asked it of the people who currently reside inside the administrative area of the US:

In his crude, spastic way, he’s asking us to consider if there might not be more to it than just cashing Government checks and consuming product. Which, when it comes down to it, was one of the big secrets of Mustache Guy’s appeal, too…

WNF: Pimp Level

Things are too serious out in the real world, friends, so I want to follow up on a suggestion I made the other day:

In this scenario, your current Pimp Level is 5, and the power bar is about halfway full.

There’s just so much to explore here. How would you rate your Pimp Level? What does it take to progress? Is Pimp Level universal? Is it persistent through time? If not, what changes in historical context do we have to take into account?

For example, what’s George Washington’s Pimp Level, and how would it compare to, say, George Soros? (The guy has fucked an entire civilization, for more than half a century; say what you will, that’s Big Pimpin’).

Discuss.

Some Random Things

I got nothin’. In an effort to get somethin’, a few items from here and there.

Zorost sent in this article from Chris Bray.

X is Literally Adolf Hitler, and Also Not-X is Literally Adolf Hitler to Precisely the Same Degree

Which hits, as he notes, some perennial themes around here. I call your attention to this bit in particular:

Democrats, far from complaining that the President of the United States has just granted himself the power of the purse [by paying TSA agents via executive order], are scoring idiotic points by denouncing him for not doing it sooner…

So the people who have been screaming at you that Donald Trump is an aspiring authoritarian who is ushering in FASCISM IN AMERICA also denounce the same Mean Orange Hitler for failing to govern through unilateral executive action often and quickly enough. He needs to defer to Congress to respect our constitutional system and obey the limits on his power, and also he needs to just go around Congress and spend money on whatever. He’s a cruel authoritarian who needs to exercise more authority without waiting for the legislative branch to say it’s okay….

Structurally, they keep putting themselves out of a job.

Emphasis mine, because I still just can’t get over that. I thought that the bedrock of American politics — the point past which nothing can fall, no matter how debased everything else gets — is the amour propre of Congress. These are incredibly stupid, incredibly venal people, who have absurdly inflated opinions of themselves. We’ve all had experience of that kind of person. Give him (or her, but for once this applies equally to both sexes) the tiniest bit of power, and they immediately become insufferable. He might only be the fry line shift manager at McDonald’s, but by God he’d rather die than give up that tiny bit of power…

…and yet, the President has spent the past 50 years, at least, constantly usurping Congress’s delegated powers (Schlesinger wrote The Imperial Presidency in 1973, when the trend was already well advanced), and Congress — the most ridiculously self-important people in the world — has done… nothing. Has cheered him on, in fact, and even criticized him for not doing it faster.

In some way I cannot begin to understand, here in the Fake and GAE, virtue-signaling about one’s lack of power has become far more socially powerful than actual power. Instead of being insanely jealous of their prerogatives — as anyone born in the 20th century would expect — they’re eager to give them up, because that somehow scores them more points with the BlueSky crowd, which is all they care about…?

I really can’t say, comrades. I’m buffaloed.

And it’s not the first time. I was sure that Covid would blow over quickly, too, once Karen realized that “lockdowns” meant she’d actually have to stay inside with little Kayden, Jayden, Brayden, and/or Khaleesi. No more dumping them at day care, so she can go self-actualize at Starbucks. But of course Karen immediately turned lockdown into a virtue-signaling contest; they’d still be doing Covid if they thought they could get away with it (you can tell — Karen: The Website is still keeping the flame alive).

I’m missing something. I just don’t get it.

The other day, Dinodoxy wrote:

I think you’re letting your unhappiness with the social conditions of “your group” (which I share btw) shade into wish casting the demise of the GAE under some “underpants gnome” theory that the collapse of empire will help your people somehow (it won’t, btw).

This may well be true. He’s also laid out a pretty good case for why Operation AIPAC Fury might not be the inevitably doomed clusterfuck I think it is. I disagree, obviously, but it’s really useful to have a staunchly defended, closely argued counterpoint.

You guys really are the best. This is the best clubhouse on the Internet, hands down.

My “news” feed is mostly not about the war, which indicates to me that it’s not going well at all. If it weren’t Media-approved, there would be a million stories about how AINO is obviously losing (it’d look a lot like HGG’s site). But since it is, you’d expect a whole bunch of “make benefit glorious AINO victory” stuff out of the Kagan Institute for Kids Who Can’t War Good… but there’s none of that, either, and in fact I’m starting to wonder where they’ve gone. Is it still Moscow By Christmas, guys gals persyns? Or have we just stopped paying attention, now that our ancient tribal beefs are playing out a little closer to home?

Be that as it may, the stuff that is in my “news” feed is more along the lines of this:

How many of these 25 so-bad-they’re-good movies have you seen?

There was once a time, youngsters, when people would actually get together in a room and watch a movie just to make fun of it. Those were fun times, back when in-person human interaction was a thing. So I bet I’ve seen more than a few…

….nope, only one: Battlefield Earth. And that was epic, no doubt. Just surreal. Watching it feels like what reading Karen: The Website feels like — like you’ve just taken a hit of something strong.

Eh, that sucks. No good chuckles there. Let’s see what else… here’s one:

20 historical facts that sound fake but aren’t

Another goddamn slideshow, of course, but we might as well have a dekko.

Oxford University Is Older Than the Aztec Empire

That’s only surprising if you don’t know anything about Pre-Colombian America. I don’t know very much, but I do know that the Aztecs were johnny-come-latelies in 1517, which is why Cortez had such an enormous advantage.

Cleopatra Lived Closer in Time to the Moon Landing Than to the Pyramids

A useful reminder of the vastness of time. And with that, the problems with our sources. I-forget-who said that future historians might have trouble determining whether Jesus lived before or after the invention of the personal computer. He was exaggerating a bit for effect, but those are the conditions some of us work under.

Ketchup Was Once Sold as a Medicine

I didn’t know that, but I believe it. 19th century diet fads were awesome. Corn flakes and Graham crackers, just to name two, were sold as diet foods. I’m pretty sure that the latter, at least, was supposed to promote sexual continence as well, because the Victorian Era was absolutely obsessed with “vitality.” Which was not yet a crappy Pearl Jam album.

Salvador Dalí Designed the Chupa Chups Logo

Didn’t know that either, but serious artistes doing ads was quite common around the turn of the 20th century. Alphonse Mucha did some lovely commercial work:

And, of course, when the Great War broke out, all the Paris Academy boys joined the corps de camofleurs. The reason so much German camo, for example, looks like Modern Art is because it IS Modern Art, put together by Franz Marc (who died in the trenches before they could extract him). Alanis-ironically, the Kitties, who had hands down the sweetest camo of all time, considered his work degenerate and banned it.

But tell me this, at least, isn’t in the spirit of Der Blaue Reiter:

Wassily Kandinsky himself could’ve designed that:

Albert Einstein Was Offered the Presidency of Israel

I’m just going to leave that there.

Might as well check in with Karen: The Website, eh?

Iran is right: Trump has already lost this war

See, now that’s what you’d expect on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times.

I’m sure the article is just the same-old, same-old, no need to get into it, but the subhead is funny:

Tehran TACO: Trump’s bad idea has gone wrong, to literally no one’s surprise. Will Putin bail him out?

I’m seriously asking y’all to imagine a world in which Russia gets involved in another war, against one of her best customers, for the benefit of the United States, which has been doing everything short of launching nukes to prolong Russia’s primary war unnecessarily.

Hollywood finds religion again

“House of David” and “The Faithful” join a rising tide of Bible-inspired shows meeting a right-trending culture

Has anyone seen any of these shows? Given who runs Hollywood, I expect that they’re nothing but the same tedious race- and gender-swapped nonsense, with the bonus message “and that’s why God demands that you sign up for Operation AIPAC Fury whatever fake and gay thing they call the inevitable invasion of Turkey.”

The robust ecosystem that arose in objection to network and cable’s unholiness moved Netflix, Amazon and Fox to claim slices of the underserved fundamentalist market.

Yes, that’s certainly what I think of when I think of Netflix and Amazon. Nothing but Bible-thumping from those guys!

Otherwise, the main distinction is presenting these chapters from the viewpoints of two of the Bible’s most famous women.

But that’s bad now, of course, because reasons.

The surging interest in “House of David” comes with its own eyebrow-raising implications, however, especially when considering the evangelicals’ excuse of citing God’s predilection for choosing imperfect men to enact His will to justify backing a nonstop liar, felon, adulterer and warmonger.

Hey, did I mention something about “…and that’s why God commands you to join up?”

And… that’s pretty much it. How disappointing.

Why MAGA fears human teachers

Did you know that MAGA fears human teachers, comrades?

You know, the other day we had a troll stop by to call us — well, me, but by implication you — a bunch of antisemites for not being on board with the latest War for Israel ™. It was good for a few yuks, but now I’m kinda wishing he’d stuck around. That’s a “MAGA,” I presume. I’d really like to know, because Aman-duh (our authoress here) and her ilk keep bringing us fascinating stories about what “MAGA” is up to, and I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

For instance, I thought for sure that Ace of Normies is “MAGA” if anyone is, but I had no idea he fears human teachers. I’m pretty sure Grillmaster McCain is “MAGA” — he can’t wait for his son to go into combat in Iran (wonder what he makes of House of David and the like?). Does he fear human teachers?

Melania Trump’s robot stunt opens a new front in the GOP’s war on education

That’s the subhead, and I’m not surprised that I have no idea what “Melania Trump’s robot stunt” was. I am surprised that I have no idea that the GOP is busy waging a “war on education.” That kind of thing is right up my alley.

(Not to worry, though, sugar tits — this is AINO we’re talking about. They’ll lose this one too, just like they’ve lost every other war since 1945. I’ll admit it’s tough to see at first glance how Israel benefits from a “war on education,” but I guess ya gotta dumb ’em down enough to watch House of David, right?)

Anyway:

“Imagine a humanoid educator named ‘Plato,’” she told attendees. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous: literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics and history.”

Welcome to the latest front in the Republican war on schools. 

I don’t know how it works in grade school, but at the college level, it’s already all-AI, all the time. AI “writes” their papers, and there are programs called “wordspinners” that “rewrite” what AI “writes,” the better to disguise their plagiarism. “Grading” papers now amounts to little more than running their AI through my AI, to have backup for when I flunk them for plagiarism.

Might as well cut out the middleman, right?

And it’s not like AI can fuck it up too bad when talking about, say, Plato (just to stick with a theme). There’s a pretty solid scholarly consensus on what he ACK-shully said, and the various interpretations of that. If the Chatbot can regurgitate Plato for Dummies faster, with some slick graphics and whatnot… well, it’ll certainly be no worse than getting it from some hungover TA with bespoke pronouns.

For decades, the GOP has been leading an assault on public education. In the 1980s and 1990s, the gripe was “stick to reading, writing and ‘rithmetic,” which implies hostility toward expanding those lessons to more complex ideas like literary analysis, critical thinking, and higher math and sciences.

No it doesn’t. That used to be basic pedagogy. For as much as Lefties love to brag about their college degrees, they have no idea what college is actually for. The Three Rs, as they were called back then — that’s what grade school does. That other stuff — ” literary analysis, critical thinking, and higher math and sciences” — is what college is for. You can tell, because they’re called” higher” math and science. You know, the kind of stuff you need a lab bench for.

This talking point, which implies that no one needs more than a fifth grade education

We need a name for this tic, comrades. It’s something like the old logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, but dumber. Kinda like that infamous interview where Jordan Peterson was talking about lobsters or whatever (I never saw it), and all the interviewer could do was repeat “So what you’re saying is, you hate women.” It also seems to be related to that “impossibility of indifference” thing we talked about the other day. You know, where I say “I don’t care about soccer” and everyone in Clown World hears it as “I hate soccer,” when in truth I’m just indifferent.

How do you go from “college subjects should be reserved for college” to “nobody needs more than a fifth grade education?” I have no idea, but it must be similar to the process whereby they go from “something something lobsters” to “you hate women.” We need a name for this, Kameraden, for rhetorical convenience.

Suggestions?

But conservatives have clung to arguments about providing students with a “classical education,” which essentially means not teaching anything that wouldn’t have been found in a 19th-century classroom.

Well, ya got me there, Aman-duh. I’d love to see a return to the 19th century classroom. Even though I myself would have a hell of a time with it, and I bet you would too. “You” in this case being you, my fellow NBCs, not Aman-duh, who I’d bet any amount of money would go into total vapor lock when faced with a question like “Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications” or “Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion,” to say nothing of the math.

Most recently, we saw the rise of Moms for Liberty, a group whose name hides its real aim: to redefine censorship as “parents’ rights” with the goal of removing books that portray people of color, women and LGBTQ people as deserving of full rights and dignity.

There’s that tic again, that we need a name for. Tell me what “rights” those people lack. Tell me what “dignity” means in their case. Sorry to be crude, comrades, but frankly I don’t want to hear about some sweaty dude sticking his dick up some other hairy dude’s ass; we’re going to get way too much of that in Pete Buttigieg’s inevitable 2028 Presidential run. What has that to do with dignity? It’s undignified to crow about it. It’s undignified to parade your pathology in public. Saying “I don’t want to hear about it” has nothing to do with your dignity, whatever that might possibly mean in this case.

The right’s war on public education has always been rooted in fear that kids will learn empathy, curiosity and critical thinking skills — all of which could lead to them questioning, or even challenging, authority.

Yeah, don’t you hate it when people do that?

That’s a rhetorical question, Aman-duh, but rhetorical questions have answers. I challenged a lot of authority back during Covid, sweet cheeks. You wanted to throw me in a camp for it.

This has given rise to a persistent fantasy of finding a way to circumvent the role of the teacher and instead download literacy, math and other basic skills into students, without teaching them all the analytical skills that provoke independent thought.

“Provoke” independent thought. What a fascinatingly revealing turn of phrase.

Donald Trump’s executive order to promote AI in schools argued that the tech “sparks curiosity and creativity” and “will equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills.” A recent Brookings Institute report, though, showed the opposite: that kids who use a lot of AI “are not thinking for themselves,” as Rebecca Winthrop, one of the study’s authors, told NPR. “They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.”

I’m just gonna leave that there.

This is bad for kids. But for MAGA, an authoritarian movement that depends on people struggling to understand others’ points of view, it has an undeniable appeal.

Sorry, comrades, I’m going to need a minute…

….

….

….

Whoo. Ok. I don’t think I popped a hernia from laughing, but it was close.

Speaking of words we need, we need to have something stronger than “The Dunning-Kruger Effect.” That describes dumb people thinking they’re smart. What do you call it when, as Mark Twain (or whoever) put it, it’s not so much what they don’t know, but that what they do know ain’t so?

Leftists are convinced that they know… well, that they know everything, and that’s the general problem, but in this specific case they’re certain that they know how “MAGA” thinks, even though “MAGA” is just something they made up. You read this stuff, and it’s like reading those elaborate grimoires from the Renaissance or something — they take some shit that doesn’t exist, and then develop these fearsomely learned propositions about it, which they then follow out to the last jot and tittle.

And in this case, throw in some delicious Alanis-level irony. So it’s “MAGA” that depends on not understanding other people’s point of view, is it? Well then, surely you must be able to tell me what “MAGA’s” point of view is? Right?

Oh, yeah, I forgot — you don’t need to understand it, because there’s nothing to understand. It’s just rayciss and sexiss, same as it ever was. Makes sense. Poor Alanis; she’s gonna have one like a surfboard, for way more than four hours.

For decency’s sake, let’s move on.

There’s more than one empathy crisis

I wasn’t aware there was even one empathy crisis, much less several. I have learned a thing this day.

Empathy among Americans has diminished notably in recent decades. The result is that it’s become a superpower

Yes, that is alarming! I wonder what might’ve caused it… ok, scratch that, because in my case, at least, I have a pretty good idea. Just to take one of many examples, I had some reservations about injecting myself with slapped-together, virtually untested glop that Big Pharma rolled out pretty much overnight, but only after securing themselves total immunity from prosecution. I’ll note that no less august personages than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris shared those reservations… right up to the very morning of January 20, 2021, at which point they made it mandatory.

And people like you, Andi Zeisler, immediately started screaming about how I should be thrown in a concentration camp.

You can see, I hope, how that would tend to diminish one’s empathy.

That first basement crying jag kicked off months in which Azra’s emotional dams were obliterated by a kind of all-purpose sorrow that never seemed to fully ebb. “I would talk on the phone to my parents and cry because I saw images in my head of their death,” she says. “The parent of one of my students died from COVID, and I felt physically sick from trying not to cry when I saw him.” She couldn’t watch the TV shows she watched before, couldn’t concentrate on work, and had no appetite. Leaving the house felt risky. “If I was on the bus and there was a crying baby or child, I panicked because I knew I would start crying with them.”

Leaving aside the Covid thing, which sounds suspiciously like your four year old son asking why Donald Trump can’t just let people love who they love, it appears to me that Azra has some serious mental problems. One hopes that being Better Than Azra, as it were, is to be desired:

It’s quite possible, indeed sometimes obligatory, to express empathy by acknowledging that the person you’re empathetic towards is fucked up, and you’re trying to get them the help they need.

She took a leave of absence from work, and her doctor prescribed Zoloft, which clouded over her mental images but didn’t dull the invasive feelings.

Ok, and that’s on you, not knowing that Zoloft, like all SSRIs, is pretty much ineffective vs. placebo. But I’m not sure why this is an empathy crisis. I mean, I personally am having an empathy “crisis” right now, if you want to grossly exaggerate for effect, because I’m just not seeing why I should give a shit — but let us not generalize from me, a lone curmudgeon who runs a blog about dick medals, to “society” at large.

The internet was newly full of empaths at the time — people who described themselves having a heightened sensitivity to the emotions and stressors of those around them that caused them to keenly experience the pain, anxiety and grief of others. Instagram Reels and TikToks bearing the hashtag #empath were full of explainers (“6 signs you might be an empath”, “The empath-astrology connection”) and advice for empaths on protecting their peace and setting boundaries with others.

Oh, I see, and never mind — this is just the latest woo-woo from overly hormonal cat ladies who spend way too much time online. This season’s “INFJ” or whatever it was, that supposedly super-rare Myers-Briggs personality type that gives you superpowers. Remember when every cat lady on earth was one of those?

As with so many self-applied labels that enter the cultural lexicon via social media, “empath” isn’t a particularly precise term; in this case, its origins are literally fantastical: The term seems to have originated in science fiction in the mid-20th century to describe characters with a supernatural ability to feel what others are feeling, telepaths of mood and emotion who were often overwhelmed and not sure what emotions actually belonged to them.

I left the link in there, in case anyone has read, or wants to read, any of those. I remember it from Star Trek: Space Fags… sorry, that doesn’t really narrow it down. I mean the one that came out in the late 80s, that had a “ship’s counselor.” You know, the one with the rack:

The original Star Trek was pretty gay, but c’mon man, imagine that within five light years of Captain Kirk; he would’ve plowed her into compost.

UCLA psychiatrist Judith Orloff’s 2017 book “The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People” ushered the concept into the self-help realm. Orloff described the empath as an emotional sponge that can become so saturated with other people’s pain and stress that it becomes their own, and maintained that developing the self-awareness to identify where the sensory information they absorb originates, and why, is key to thriving as someone who feels more than the average person.

That right there is why I read Karen: The Website, my friends. I love it when they tattle on themselves like that.

developing the self-awareness to identify where the sensory information they absorb originates, and why

Proclaim “I am an NPC” without using the words. Where else could sensory information possibly come from?

I mean, we could ask “Plato,” Melania Trump’s teacher-bot, but it might give you a whole recap of epistemology and other such bullshit, something about how we cannot know das Ding an sich. But even those guys would admit that whatever our senses manage to tell us about the world, it’s our senses doing it.

Consider the headspace of someone who truly believes, or at least makes a real effort to pretend to believe, that “sensory information” is somehow just absorbed from outside, from other people, and is so overwhelming that you can’t regulate it.

There’s no diagnostic criterion for empathy. Consensus seems to place it under the broad heading of neurodivergence

Riiiight. Of course. And like all “neurodivergence,” that means you need to sit at home all day, endlessly doomscrolling BlueSky while getting crocked on box wine at 10 am. See also: fibromyalgia, long covid.

But investigative journalist Hannah Ewens’ interactions with a handful of people who have professionalized their empathy portray an unavoidable paradox: Demonstrating the possession of what Ewens calls a “superpower” inevitably takes the form of performance. She follows David Sauvage, a New York City–based empath who does live readings in a gallery, charges $200 an hour for private sessions and leads empath meetups where attendees say things like, “We are the sensitive people that are here to kind of save the planet.”

I am in the wrong fucking job, my friends. I try to use my powers, such as they are, for good… but fuck that. I need to get a gig like this one, where I charge ninnies $200 per hour to do “live readings.” And, of course, to invite the more toothsome clients backstage for one-on-one therapy.

But it’s undeniable that a dearth of empathy has become a feature of 21st-century life. A 2010 University of Michigan study found that college students reported levels of empathy that reflected a decrease of 40% from those reported in previous decades.

Huh. Wonder why that might be.

the willful memory-holing of how much humanity was literally and figuratively lost with COVID and the impact on health-care workers has led to a prolonged state of compassion fatigue.

Well, that was 2021, not 2010, but she kinda has a point. Not the point she thinks she has, obviously, but I know I’m pretty goddamn sick of “the impact on health-care workers.” You mean like those chubby nurses who found the time to choreograph endless TikTok videos of themselves dancing down the hallways of their totally empty hospitals? Or pretty much everything else that went on? I don’t personally know of anyone who died of covid, but I know quite a few people with conditions that are much worse now, because they couldn’t get in for routine care because of all the ridiculous restrictions that enabled the aforesaid chubby nurses to have those empty hallways in which to cavort.

Interdependence with others is anathema to the project of American neoliberalism, with its emphasis on the private sector and determination to view systemic problems like poverty as individual struggles that are won by force of will alone. Technology originally theorized as a revolutionary conduit for connection has been harnessed to monetize conflict. 

Annnnnnd there it is! They all do it, of course, these goofy bints who write for Karen: The Website, but ol’ Andi is the reigning champ. Up to now, she’s been relatively straightforward in her description of a phenomenon: There are, or were, people calling themselves “empaths,” blah blah blah. It’s just another fad, but whatever, it’s at least defensible; the entire Marketing industry depends on people reporting on fads.

But she can’t just report; she’s got to give it some deep social and political significance. But she doesn’t know what that might be, except the usual tiresome bromides about Bad Orange Man. But simply to say “and that’s why Orange Man BAD!!!!” would leave her a few thousand words short — this being Karen: The Website — and also be a bit too obvious, even for Karen: The Website. So she has to revert to Eggheadese for a few sentences, to make sure you know that there’s a Very Serious Discussion upcoming.

The Trump administration and the MAGA movement have embraced overt anti-empathy as its defining stance, and the Christian nationalists, eugenicists, business leaders, and proud bigots who have the president’s ear now rail against empathy as a sin and a cancer.

Eugenicists? You mean, like Margaret Sanger? That’s a new one on me, gang. Did you know that Trump is surrounded by eugenicists?

There is a generation growing up that can see and hear incuriosity, shameless lying and lack of both perspective and humility with which the nation’s leader talks to and about other people. They can see and hear how government officials insult, lie about, and dehumanize other Americans. And they can see and hear that powerful, wealthy people are engineering a future in which there’s no longer a value proposition in humans relative to machines. But the people in power can only continue to be in power if the rest of us cease to trust, listen to and organize with each other.

What do you call that thing, when you inadvertently make the exact opposite of the case you think you’re making, better than its actual proponents could?

Azra was relieved when she was finally able to stop crying. She was equally relieved to find out that she isn’t an empath after all. “I think I did know that, but of course I went down the rabbit hole anyway,” she says. “Being aware of all the suffering, and all the horror of the world — we’re not supposed to have all that awareness. I definitely didn’t want it. Being maybe more sensitive than the average person is a way to say you have a reason to shut down.” Most of the clarity she found in her journey through the empath-sphere came from other non-empaths: “The people who . . . not that they were making fun of empaths, but the people who were like ‘OK, what if you’re not an empath, what if you’re just a person who feels helpless to do anything big and that comes out as hypersensitivity to smaller things?’ Aren’t we supposed to be affected by those big things?”

Oh yeah, Azra. I’d forgotten about her, and I bet you had, too. I’m just going to leave that there, because what more is there to say? Besides “something something they should engrave the 19th Amendment on Western Civ’s tombstone”… but of course we knew that.

Thanks for reading, comrades. Have a good one.

The Red Caesar Scenario!!!

Comrades, I took down the previous “open thread” post, because although I’ve got nothin’, our man Black’s Art and Music Stack has something. So, so much something.

The Red Caesar Scenario is a real band now! Well, as real as AI can make it, anyway, and I will say, officially and for the record, that this is better than 90% of the crap that’s on the radio now. Very arty, but I like it.

Official band website here.

You want a completely different vibe? That first one was like early, edgy Garbage. This is more like Fiona Apple; a bit more EDM-y but fun.

If you’re not already half in love with Coraline, she’s got a journal.

Kind of a Sarah Mac feel to this one, but harder:

And of course the original, wherein we learned that it’s rumored to be legal in Riga (but only on Thursday):

All releases here.

And that’s not all! I’m going to let the man himself tell you about their Geocities page:

Check this out – an old school WORKING Geocities style site for the Red Caesar Scenario. Wear sunglasses. Not every button or link works, but a lot do.

https://redcaesarscenario.com/Scenariocities

Click the HELP button if you have any trouble. If you have trouble with the Guestbook page, reload it. Maybe reload it 7 to 10 times, even.

But whatever you do, do NOT click the BALTIC VICE BUTTON. Or the OTHER Baltic Vice Button. And definitely don’t click either Baltic Vice button 15 to 20 times. Nope, nope, don’t do it.

The MIDI files play, but they sound awful. Which is the point. Very 1990s.

I’m not often lost for words, comrades, but that does it. This is just incredible stuff.

I’m awed by you guys. This is the best clubhouse on the Internet, hands down.

Friday Miscellany

I forgot to ask for mailbag questions yesterday, so this’ll be a bit of a grab bag.

The first item on my news feed this morning:

DHS shutdown breakthrough comes at cost for Republicans as funding fights nears end

That’s Fox News, so that’s the best possible spin they can put on it.

They just can’t help themselves, can they?

I gotta say, the next two years are gonna be hilarious. Between Operation AIPAC Fury and the GOP’s usual shitweaselry, the Dems are going to sweep back into power in 2026, and won’t that be a hoot? We should set up a betting pool: The Impeachment of the Day. Who’s the most obscure Trump Admin figure they can haul into kangaroo court, on what absurd charge?

There’s simply no way we’re voting ourselves out of this. Lamppost, rope, some assembly required.

I’m going to treat this as a Friday question, from Zardoz

Sev, I can’t believe you wrote an article about what it is to be an American on Opening Day with no mention of baseball. That is un-American! As punishment, you need to sit in a corner and watch soccer for a while.

Seriously though, in honor of the baseball season starting and the theme of Americanism, would love to see an Inside Baseball breakdown sometime on the rise of Japanese and Korean players in MLB. Is the talent there getting better, or is this just a marketing push to globalize the game? Ohtani is certainly impressive and I’m still amazed at the number of Japanese pitchers in the league (I would have thought their smaller physical size would have put them at a disadvantage given the push for higher and higher velocities). Will we see regular inter-league play between MLB and Nippon league teams in our lifetime?

I can’t really speak to the rise of Asian players in the MLB, except in the most general terms. Which means, of course, cultural terms.

It’s almost a cliche to wonder why there’s no American Shakespeare. Or, as they used to put it back in those Western Civ classes in college (before Dead White Males became completely anathema), why tiny Athens produced such a plethora of geniuses. Simply as a matter of numbers, you’d think…

…but that’s the thing, right there: numbers are just potential. Culture actualizes potential. There’s no “American Shakespeare” because Americans aren’t a playwriting culture. There are some American playwrights, and some of them were pretty good — Tennessee Williams, for example. But he did his best work when plays were already pretty much a dead form of entertainment.

So it goes with sports. Latin America plays soccer and baseball; they are soccer and baseball cultures. The USA is, or at least was, not a soccer-playing culture, so even though the USA has more people than any five South American countries combined, there are no world-class American soccer players (as far as I know, and bearing in mind that I don’t care). Last I saw (ditto), Lionel Messi dominated the American pro league, and he’s only playing in America because he lost a step in the Euro league (David Beckham did the same thing back in the days).

There is, or at least was, no “soccer infrastructure” in America. Culturally, I mean — if you’re a good enough athlete to play high-level soccer, you’re most likely a good enough athlete to play high-level something else that pays better and gets you more girls.

Plus there’s a whole youth pipeline. Using myself as an example: Was I a good enough athlete to play varsity soccer? I have no idea. It never occurred to me to try. The most salient fact about my athletic career, such as it was, is that I’m left-handed. So very early I got funneled into baseball, the one major sport where handedness really matters. And because I could throw, I got funneled away from football, the other major sport where handedness matters, but negatively. I would’ve much preferred to play football — I grew up in the South, where football is the only sport that matters; the kind of tail even end-of-the-bench scrubs get is much better than the kind of tail even starters on the varsity baseball team get. But for structural reasons*, unless you’ve got an absolutely electric arm they’re just not going to let a lefty play quarterback, which is the only position I could’ve played (besides placekicker, I guess).

*the most important position on the offensive line is the left tackle, because he protects the QB’s blind side… if the quarterback is righthanded, as almost all of them are. With a lefty at QB, suddenly the right tackle is the most important. And yeah, I know, just move the left tackle over to the right side… but it doesn’t work like that at the higher levels. It just doesn’t, for reasons that elude me (having never played high-level football), but if a lefty makes it to at least the college level, the offense has to reorient itself around his handedness.

So: Am I a good enough athlete to play varsity soccer? Dunno. Don’t care, either, because a lefty who can get some mustard on the ball has pretty much one athletic avenue open to him. In America, a good athlete who is also lefthanded will be told he’s wasting his time fooling around with soccer — learn to throw a curveball, kid! Same way, in America, a kid who’s 6’5″ will be told he’s wasting his time with soccer, learn to shoot a jump shot. And so on. In America, if you want to play soccer past the whatever-they-call-Little-League level, you need to either really love it, to the point where you’ll pass on glory and poosy just to play, or have no other athletic options.

So the explanation for the sudden upsurge in Asian baseball players, I think, boils down to culture. Japan and Korea are now baseball-playing cultures. Throw in some Information Velocity, too — it’s now practical to really scout Asian players; you can now treat NPB (Nippon Pro Baseball, the highest Japanese league) and KBO (the highest Korean league) as, effectively, Minor Leagues. There’s enough “baseball infrastructure,” culturally, that NPB and KBO guys are bound to be at least as good as high-level American Minor Leaguers (that’s not an insult, though it probably sounds like one — nobody becomes an MLB star without first having been a high-level Minor Leaguer, and lots of high-level Minor Leaguers still flame out when the hit The Show).

The difference being, there’s actually not a whole bunch of high-level pro baseball in Latin America. Yeah, of course, there are ACK-shully a bunch of Latin American pro baseball leagues, but Latin American pro baseball leagues are like American pro soccer leagues — the guys who play there either aren’t good enough to catch on with American teams; or they were good enough once, but they’ve lost a step; or they are American players, keeping in condition by playing “winter ball” in South America. A guy who’s good enough to play pro “major league” baseball in, say, Venezuela is easily good enough to play pro Minor League ball in America, so that’s where he goes — every low-Minor ball team in America is full of 17 year old Venezuelans.

Nippon Pro Baseball, though, is the real thing. Those guys are Major Leaguers over there, and get paid like it. It’s not easy to sign some 17 year old Japanese phenom, because he knows he’s going to get sent to, say, Visalia, to play for meal money. He’d much rather stay home in Japan, where he might or might not get paid better (I have no idea what Japanese minor league salaries are), but he has a better chance of moving up faster, plus it’s still Japan (as opposed to Visalia, which I’ve never visited, but I’ve heard is awful, like the rest of the San Joaquin Valley).

So if you sign a NPB guy, you’re signing a guy who is already a star, and expects to get paid like one. That’s a big gamble, because even if you assume that NPB is about the same as Triple-A, talent-wise (again, that’s not an insult), a lot of Triple-A stars still flame out in The Show… before they’re getting paid like stars. Look at Hideo Nomo, for example. Once MLB hitters figured that funky delivery out, he didn’t stink, exactly, but he’s 123–109 lifetime, with a 4.24 lifetime ERA. That’s an ok back-of-the-rotation guy, but the Dodgers were paying him like an ace, because he was an ace… in Japan.

Speaking of pitchers, that goes to the other part of Zardoz’s question. Height helps with velocity, or at least it can, but it’s far from a 1:1 relationship. Baseball Reference lists Nomo at 6’2″, 210, and… ehhhh… maybe. Generously. But even if we take that as true, he wasn’t really a fireballer. The Wiki entry says his fastball topped out at 95, and again, maybe, but that’s not blazing by MLB standards. Here’s the Wiki section in its entirety:

With an overhand delivery, Nomo threw a fastball topping out at 95 mph and a forkball as his primary pitches.

Nomo was known for his signature windup, known as “The Tornado”. He began by slowly raising his arms high above his head before lifting his front leg and twisting his torso until his back faced home plate. Then, he hurtled toward the plate with an explosive delivery that featured the same arm speed for all his pitches.

I left the link for “forkball” in there, in case anyone is interested in baseball arcana. But also because a forkball is a variant of the split-finger fastball, and we don’t need to get into all that, but we do need to note that both look exactly like a fastball when it leaves the pitcher’s hand, but drops sharply at the end. Combine that with this

an explosive delivery that featured the same arm speed for all his pitches

and that’s the key to pitching success.

I don’t think you can really appreciate it until you’ve seen it up close. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can:

First, realize that the camera is at least a few yards (or, for non-Americans, metres) behind the batter, so it’s even faster than that. Second, notice how that fucker moves, laterally and vertically. The first pitch tails inside on a right-handed batter. The second one does too — it starts at the right-hand corner of the plate, then tails over, while dropping. The third one appears to hang for a second, then drop. The fourth just drops.

This is all literally “inside baseball” stuff, and I’m sure those who don’t like this kind of thing have already bailed out, but fuck it, it’s my blog, so note that those might well be several different kinds of pitches. The inside-tailing ones are probably “two-seam” fastballs; the kid might throw those for preference. The third and especially the fourth are probably “splitters” or “sinkers,” which are just faster “forkballs” (yeah, I know). Hell, maybe it’s a “splinker”

Look at that sick motherfucker. It’s going like 93, too.

The point (finally!) is that all fastballs do that, at least to some degree. They don’t just travel in a straight line; if they do, you get rocked, because pro hitters can catch up to it (witness the career of Todd Van Poppel, just because I haven’t tormented Pickle Rick enough, knowing how brutally the Pirates are wasting generational talent Paul Skenes. Van Poppel could throw the absolute shit out his fastball, but it didn’t move). So, as a batter, you have to try to hit something coming at you that fast, which is also moving…

…and that’s just the fastball. You have to make your decision to swing or not more or less the instant the pitch is released, so if it isn’t a fastball, but just looks like one, you’re fucked.

Again, the miracle of YouTube. This kid isn’t throwing under anything close to game conditions, so he’s a bit sloppy, but notice his arm movement and release point.

There’s a difference, and notice that Brett Graves spent all of a few months in The Show. That’s a nasty yakker, but his release point is all over the place, and his arm action slows (note especially the pitch at about 1:30, which doesn’t break. At all. That’s a “hanging curveball,” and an MLB hitter — who has already diagnosed it as a curveball based on release point, spin, and arm action — is going to put it on the fucking moon, since it’s basically a 75 mph fastball that doesn’t move)).

I guess what I’m trying to say, comrades, is that a) velocity and body size don’t necessarily correlate, and b) velocity ain’t all that, above some fairly clear threshold. That MLB teams have forgotten b) is going to come back and bite them in the ass, but it’s just like everything else here in Clown World: Velocity is the “metric,” so it’s Metrics Uber Alles: The Line Must Go Up, no matter what.

Ahhh, fuck it, since we’re here, and it’s my blog, y’all are just going to have to endure this:

That’s Barry Zito, who is to soft-tossing lefties what Chesty Puller is to Marines: our god, who briefly incarnated to show us what’s possible, before ascending back to Baseball Heaven to commune with Shoeless Joe Jackson (Baseball Heaven looks a lot like Iowa). I want y’all to focus especially on the pitch at about 0:09, when he whiffs the right-handed batter in gray (I can’t tell what uniform the batter is wearing).

Did you catch it? The announcer actually says “fastball away,” and that is why Barry Zito is our god. That’s NOT a fastball. That’s the biggest, nastiest curveball you will ever see. That is about as close to the Platonic Ideal of a curveball as it’s possible to get. And he says “fastball away,” because that’s where it starts: over the outside edge of the plate.

The announcer didn’t mess up. He’s a professional, and because he’s a professional, he’s watching the pitcher’s release. When it leaves Zito’s hand, it looks like a fastball away. It’s actually a curveball, and the catcher finally grabs it at the batter’s shoelaces.

I can tell you this, comrades, and it’s nothing close to a humblebrag: In my prime, I could throw as fast as Barry Zito in his prime. Zito probably never topped 90 in his entire life. What I could not do — which is why Zito has a Cy Young, and I never got past high school — is make all my pitches look exactly the goddamn same coming out of my hand. That’s what separates the pros from the amateurs, and the stars from the pros.

Well, Zardoz…. there it is. That enough baseball for ya?

DBiase brings us a link of note, in which the “societal memeplex” is discussed:

The first step in designing for social transmission is minimizing preexisting immunity. Nazism, for example, would not be an adaptive meme for a 21st-century parasitic memeplex, because so many prospective hosts have strong negative reactions to Nazism, Nazis, swastikas, etc. Any meme which conflicts with its prospective hosts’ present perception of reality or morality is socially maladaptive.

To which DBiase comments:

To abuse the metaphor, I suspect part of the problem is that we are undergoing a cultural cytokine storm where the immunity against the kitties is killing the host. Even healthy things like “some limits on immigration” set off a debilitating reaction.

I agree, and can’t think of a way around it at present, which is why I bring this stuff up. To do as the Kitties did — considered strictly technically, that is, as technique — but not appear to be, or actually be, spastic retards like the Kitties… that’s the trick. The Soviets devoted massive resources to this project, over decades — they are the Smooth Operators par excellence when it comes to Psychological Operations; no one has ever done it better. We have to figure out how to do it freelance.

Cale brings us a link of note, about Ozempic and what I guess would be called anhedonia:

Short version: while they make you stop caring about food, they make some people stop caring about anything at all. Not everyone, but enough that they should probably come with a warning, and that’s not likely to happen now that billions are being made.

If one is conspiratorially inclined, one might say that’s a feature, not a bug. I’ve been predicting the rise of “Ghetto Affective Disorder” for a long time now: Put “feeling vaguely dissatisfied with life” in the DSM-VI, and get the Big Pharma boys on it; they’ll tranq our asses out like Equilibrium (an exquisitely stupid movie, but the gunfights were cool). I’ve often suspected that the big push to legalize pot — ehh, excuse me, “CBD” — is just battlespace prep for legalizing stuff like oxycontin; the only reason they haven’t done it is because White people are known to like it. Of course, our Insect Overlords love tormenting people, especially White people, so maybe Better Living Through Chemistry is off the table, but it has to have occurred to them that it would be convenient, at least, to dope obstreperous plebs into oblivion.

(One obvious downside: I bet Karen is one of the biggest consumers of Ozempic, and Karen is the only remaining reliable Shock Worker of The Revolution. If Karen stops caring… but then again, if they could see the skull-fuckingly obvious consequences of their actions, they wouldn’t be Juggs, now would they?)

BileJones brings us a link of note, a compilation of historical names. I love this kind of thing. It’s what “antiquarians” used to do, before History became eggheadized (and thus fake and gay).

Quotulatiousness has a screengrab of note:

I… uhhhh…. I can’t see a single thing wrong with that hypothesis.

Speaking of men, women, and the mysterious disharmony between the two, Quotulatiousness has another one. YMMV, but it does give us a clear sense of what has been taken from us.

I think that does it for today, gang. Have a great weekend.

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