Author: CS Admin

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers Popular responsibility

The Law of Unintended Trump Support

Donald Trump, Afghanistan, outsider, consensus

Last week, when President Donald Trump abandoned his previous policy position on getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in favor of continuing the establishment-supported policy of keeping those troops there, he was very well-received in our nation’s capital.

NeverTrumper/neo-con Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) spoke of Mr. Trump’s “smarts” and “moral courage.”

The #NeverPraiseTrump Washington Post applauded the president’s valiant “self-correction.”

Yet when Trump holds a view contrary to the Washington consensus his wisdom and moral bravery elicit less celebration.

Instead, we hear that The Donald is unfit to command.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” says James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) concurred, “that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

And from the usual suspect list of television talking heads we get clinical diagnoses, talk of “erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger.”

Mr. Trump combines every bad personality trait imaginable, the litany runs.

But all this is for nought.

Donald Trump has been able to withstand media negativity as well as the lack of support from his own party’s insiders for one simple reason: it validates him.

Every insider attack, every media-fueled outrage campaign, just proves him as the ultimate outsider to a system that the long-frustrated, increasingly angered electorate wants turned upside down.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*This episode of Common Sense condenses my regular weekend remarks at Townhall.

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Google: Disagreement

Google, censorship, Boycott, Competition, free market, be evil

Once upon a time, Google penned a stern note to self: “Don’t be evil.”

What you regard as avoiding evil, though, depends on what you regard as doing good.

Does Google think it’s “good” to fire someone for offering reasoned objections to vapid pieties about why there are more men than women working as programmers, and about how to fix the problem? Assuming it is a problem.

If the answer is yes, then it’s up to more reasonable people to say, “No, Google, stomping on candid internal discussion of your (bad) politics and policies is not ‘doing good.’”

Alas, some Google critics push for a “remedy” worse than the problem: government force. They want government to impose new prohibitions and mandates on large private firms that help people to spread their opinions.

I don’t necessarily agree when a firm — Google, Twitter, PayPal or anybody else — stops providing services to persons expressing views that managers and HR departments disdain. Yet I may agree. No one is morally obligated — and no one should be legally compelled — to help spread the views of others.

I certainly refuse to distribute any installment of “Common Sense” guest-authored by The Anti-Paul-Jacob Club.

When market actors make bad decisions without violating anyone’s rights, others have many powerful and peaceful means of opposing those decisions. Criticism. Boycott. Competition.

But we shouldn’t seek to outlaw the decision-making.

The right to freedom includes no guarantee that one will always do the right thing as others see it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

The Underground Amphibian

Purple Pig-Nose Frog, Ghats mountain range in India, KEK, Kekistan, endangered

A new species of frog has been discovered, and I’m just happy it has nothing to do with online japes and jibes about Trump, social justice, or an ancient Egyptian deity. But before you can say “Praise Kek,” please note:

Sometimes a frog is just a frog.

But this frog is special, living most of its life underground. It is purple. And though this is not stressed in the reports, it’s markedly gelatinous.

In an article entitled “New Purple Pig-Nose Frog Found in Remote Mountains,” Jason Bittel explains that the frog comes above ground only when it rains — which in the Western Ghats mountain range in India is during monsoon season.

Named after the discovers’ late colleague, Dr. Subramaniam Bhupathy, it is dubbed Bhupathy’s purple frog (Nasikabatrachus bhupathi). I have to tip my hat to them, so to speak, for the herpetologist’s first name seems more fitting for a submerged-in-earth amphibian: “Subramaniam purple frog” would almost qualify as a pun. And, as readers of these Common Sense squibs will confirm, I am not always so valiant in resisting the art of the pun.

But you don’t read these commentaries for science news.

So, a moral.

Around the world, amphibians are disturbingly under threat. As Alex Jones hyperbolizes, “they’re turning the frogs gay!” But be that as it may (or, more likely, may not), even under greater threat is political common sense.

Let’s hope it, too, will emerge with the coming monsoon.

In India? Your neighborhood? Kekistan?

Probably not in Washington, D.C. But it’s Friday, we can at least hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

Is This Even Funny?

Amy Schumer, comedy, equal pay, feminism, The Leather Special, PC, HBO, equality

Stand-up comic Amy Schumer made headlines in Variety, this week, for her re-negotiations with Netflix over her recent comedy special, The Leather Special.

It initially garnered her a “mere” $11 million, while, Variety reported, comedians “Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle were given $20 million per special as part of their deals with Netflix,” according to a summary at Vulture.com.* “Schumer then went back and negotiated for ‘significantly more compensation,’” scuttlebutt has it.

After-the-contract negotiations seem weird to me . . . almost . . . indecent.

But then, this might be apt, considering Schumer’s characteristic form of humor, which is almost relentlessly of an intimate sexual nature. Like many another Netflix watcher, I could not finish her special. “Indecent” is the nice word for it.**

The special was so relentlessly panned that Netflix created a new feedback system to discourage viewers from leaving severely negative criticisms and evaluations. It was a big deal months back.

So why did she think she could get more? Though she now denies it, the early reports said she demanded some sort of parity with Rock and Chappelle. And that “equal pay” for “equal work” ethic does seem to be behind the very idea of her ex post negotiating strategy.

The thing is, Rock and Chappelle got more money, obviously, because their ability to make money for their venues is amply proven. Schumer, though she is not without talent and definitely has her partisans, is not as big an audience draw.

Like wages in the normal labor market, it’s about productivity.

And you’d have to pay me to watch The Leather Special in its entirety.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Variety is behind a paywall. I’m quoting Vulture because, like any good scavenger, I’m not paying for Variety.

** No idea whether I would have made it through a special with Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. I get the impression I’m not in the target audience.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

One Way to Do It

Philip K. Dick, Nazi, ovens, ashes, smoke, abortion, crematorium, camp

While reading CBS’s recent story on Iceland’s success at reducing the number of Down syndrome cases, I was reminded of the Amazon Prime series Man in the High Castle.

The show, based on the celebrated alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick (1928–1982), explores a timeline wherein the Axis powers won World War II. The United States is divided between the Greater Nazi Reich and the Empire of Japan.

In one scene, one of the protagonists — a hero? a villain? — is stalled on a Midwest country roadside. He smells something in the air. Smoke. Ash.

The very American sheriff explains: it is a local hospital destroying defective humans. The weak, the sick, the disabled.

And we, the viewers, recoil: how evil. Nazis actually execute the weak, the sick, the disabled. Well, they did, in history, not just fiction.

But, as CBS explains, the reason Down syndrome cases are disappearing all over the place, and in Iceland most of all, is not a new cure. Chalk it up to the rise of prenatal screenings. We see fewer Down syndrome people because, before birth, they are executed. Aborted.

In our non-fictional timeline, many Americans are incensed that a few folks proclaiming to be Nazis have been “allowed” to demonstrate in public.

Nazism is evil. I agree.

But how do these morally horrified people react about the very “progressive” and culturally acceptable practice of killing the unwanted?

Think I’ve gone over the top, have abused a revered author to make a point alien to his own? Well, please read Dick’s “The Pre-Persons,” a story about abortion, way post-natal . . . until the age at which a person can understand algebra.*

Quite the moral calculation we make, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That could mean it’s open season for murder as states are moving to drop algebra requirements because so many fail to master the subject. 

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Categories
Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

Of Course, You Know, This Means War

Afghanistan, war, Trump, foreign policy, defense, middle east, east asia

When Steve Bannon was booted out of the White House, my thoughts turned immediately to war. As I wrote in frustration on Friday,

Bannon’s departure probably means the slim chance that the US might withdraw from “our” open-ended, never-ending occupation of Afghanistan has been foreclosed.

If we don’t win the war by ushering in a completely transformed, modernized and westernized Afghanistan, at least our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc., etc., will each have. their turn.

Of course, if the fabled “Graveyard of Empires” continues to work its historic magic, maybe future generations won’t face that burden: the United States could fall . . . as a worldwide imperial presence. And, if our global military archipelago fails — for, say, want of wealth to throw overseas — do we have any reason to believe that our republic would bounce back?

There remains more than enough reason to work for foreign policy sanity.

Prior to his evening national address on the day of the eclipse, Trump explained what he intends to do in Afghanistan — send 4,000 more troops.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s door-slapped rump did not dissuade him from tweeting out what he intends to do “on Capitol Hills, in the media, and in corporate America”:

If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents. . . .

Call this the Bugs Bunny Policy: “Of course, you know, this means war!”

And considering the promises made in the President’s speech, we can amend that to “of course, this means never-ending war.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability general freedom local leaders term limits too much government

Term Limits for the Memories

Councilman John Crescimbeni, term limits, congress, Florida, promises, politicians

Opponents say term limits destroy “institutional knowledge.”

Imagine legislatures where unsophisticated solons blindly fashion public policies lacking any knowledge of the pluses or minuses of past legislation.

Well . . . actually that explanation bears a striking resemblance to the status quo in our career-dominated Congress. Who wants that?

Now comes an interesting real-world example of such institutional memory: term limits itself.

Back in 1991, residents of Jacksonville, Florida, petitioned a limit of two consecutive terms for city council members onto the ballot — after the city council voted not to place it before voters. When voters had their say, a very loud 82 percent endorsed term limits.

The Florida Times Union called it a “landslide decision.”

That was 26 years ago.* Last month, Councilman Matt Schellenberg proposed that the voter-enacted two-term limit should be replaced by a more politician-friendly three-term limit. He wants to stay in office for 12 years, rather than just eight.

“I think we restrict democracy when we put limits on us,” he declared. “I find the position of being on the council for 12 years is a perfect number . . .”

That’s when Councilman John Crescimbeni offered a dose of outside-the-institution memory, explaining that council members who voted against placing term limits on that 1991 ballot were run over.

“Six of the ten people who voted against [term limits] didn’t come back to office,” Crescimbeni warned. “If you want to push the green button tonight, I suspect that’s going to seal your fate.”

Suddenly, the city council decided to push off making any decision . . . until this week’s meeting. **

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A new poll commissioned by U.S. Term Limits shows  that Jacksonville voters oppose weakening their term limits law by a better than four-to-one margin.

** Your displeasure can be communicated to the Jacksonville council by calling (904) 630-1377.

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Illustration based on a photograph by Mark Bonica

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Statues and Limitations

Thomas Jefferson, pixelated, Robert E. Lee, Washington, Jefferson, free speech, slavery, Nazis, Charlottesville, KKK, slippery slope

“Should they take down the Jefferson Memorial?”

That is what PBS’s Charlie Rose asked Al Sharpton. Now, the “Reverend” is not my go-to source for political insight, but his answer* caught my attention.

“I think that people need to understand that, when people that were enslaved and robbed of even the right to marry and had forced sex with their slave masters, this is personal to us,” replied Rev. Sharpton. “My great-grandfather was a slave in South Carolina . . . Our families were victims of this.”

Asked if this precluded “public monuments” for “everyone associated with slavery,” Sharpton argued: “When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds, you are asking me to subsidize the insult to my family.”

One can attack the messenger, Sharpton, sure. But what if we instead think of him as our neighbor? I certainly wouldn’t want to insult a neighbor, much less make him pay for the privilege.

Notably, the Reverend embraced privatization, suggesting, “You have private museums.” Privatizing controversial monuments would certainly solve Sharpton’s stated problem.

Of course, the logic behind taking down statues or dismantling the Jefferson Memorial — or merely privatizing them — might also lead to changing the names of cities, counties and states, rivers and mountains. And it’s not just Washington and Jefferson — twelve presidents were slave owners, including Union General U.S. Grant.

Who knows how many are undeservedly memorialized?

Frankly, I’ve never liked the name of my Virginia county: Prince William. A liberty-loving people ought not be stuck with such a monarchial brand.

Let the people decide.

But by vote, not street brawl.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* This exchange begins at the 15:22 mark in the interview.

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Categories
ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Great Diversion

Nazi, Civil War, soldiers, dead soldiers, Charlottesville, antifa

Though the breakdown of civil debate seems new, the subjects are old. We are actually talking about Nazis, again. Nazi death counts. And the Confederacy. The former defeated by my father’s generation, the latter defeated several generations earlier.

Why?

Because talking about the future would require actual thought. It’s easier to fight over the past, over symbols of the past.

That is why there was a Charlottesville debacle. It is about a statue, a monument to dead soldiers featuring the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. And what it means. The “Unite the Right” rally was set in Charlottesville because of the city council’s decision to remove it.

It is interesting, though, that the event did not unite “the Right.” Conservative and even many alleged “alt-right” groups refused to participate.

But “the Left” seems more united than before. If you focus on past racism and the persistence of Nazi and Confederate symbology, it’s pretty easy to agree. I agree.

And yet, I take a step back, and remember that those monuments do not have the univocal racist meaning attributed to them. They were intended to heal wounds.*

Now they open up old ones.

And yet this is all a diversion. We are facing a major set of crises that could lead to war, depression, chaos, and (possibly) worse. But we are not now handling them because we are fighting over symbols of the past.

This may be a very human thing to do.

But it is not smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At least 350,000 young American men died wearing Confederate uniforms in the Civil War, and half a million Union soldiers are believed to have died directly from their war wounds. Today’s population is ten times greater, so adjusted for today it would be eight million deaths. That is a lot of searing wounds.

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Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism

Loco Micro Repression

Close but no cakewalk prize.

Modern social justice advocates sometimes come up with legitimate complaints . . . only to wander off terra firma and into cloud-cuckoo land.

“Microaggressions” is one of these airy wanderings, and Katherine Timpf has spotted another in the ever-growing catalog of social justice beefs:

The size of our society’s chairs is now being considered a “microaggression” against overweight people, according to a guide released by The New School, a private college in New York City.

Proponents of this cause, Timpf notes, insist that “Microaggression is not ‘Micro’ in Impact,” and that the best response to faux pas, slights, indelicacies, and what-have-you is snitching to the administration and intervention from same. Quite overbearing, if you ask me. During my too brief college stint it would have been considered an insult — a microaggression? — to think that young adults could not handle minor affronts such as so helpfully listed at The New School.

But let’s get real here. Microaggressions do not justify treating adults as children and setting up college administrators as in loco parentis tribunals — much less Molotov cocktails, sucker punches or bike locks in socks. At best, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Ned’s microaggression justifies Zed’s microretaliation. Nothing more.

So how does one micro-respond?

Manners; etiquette.

In olden times, a well-mannered person, when snubbed or otherwise insulted had the option of responding with a cutting remark . . . without any actual cutting, without even raising the tone of his or her voice.

Activists and collegians really should look into it.

And not bring up chair size: the micro-chair/macro-posterior issue has too many “microaggressive” jokes built into it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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