Yesterday started off both as a mess and something good. I missed my ride - got the time he was coming completely screwed up in my head. However, I felt well enough to go to church, so I started walking. Just to prove that I could.
The problems erupted in the evening. After a nap and a light dinner. I did not get to sleep until around 4 AM. I got some reading done. The email attended, but mostly it was a lot of hot baths. All I can say of that is that I got started on the introduction to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.
The best thing was a long chat on the telephone with J. I like to think I amuse her.
Trump's trip to the correspondent's dinner got interrupted; he seems to have never been in danger. He is reaping what he sowed - hatred breeds violence. Can we survive his ugliness?
Up at nine this morning, a trip to the convenience store, and finishing off this blog post. I also did one for the new writing blog.
Son of Nobody by Yann Martel review – Life of Pi author discovers a long-lost poem from Troy (The Guardian). Let me know what Martel was doing after Life of Pi.
Latest Ringo Starr album review. I had already heard the single and thought it was great. But who can dislike Ringo? This is the single:
Also from The Guardian: To see or not to see? Every single Shakespeare play – ranked! Proving I love lists, and this one supports Allan Bloom's opinion of what are the greatest plays of Shakespeare.
WXRT - the Chicago station I listened to in law school and what supplied the music for yesterday.
What a Muslim folk trickster can teach us about the danger of holding a single worldview. Being ignorant of this character, I read the essay. It is the trickster character archetype, but maybe a little more funny than the usual. A good reminder that right makes might; also, that the canny beat the arrogant.
History is full of powerful actors who believed the world’s complexity could be overcome by will and might. Hoja has been subverting confident authorities for at least seven centuries, while refusing to be pinned down, even as a hero. If his tales can be said to have an overall lesson, it is against the comfort of easy answers.
Declaring hard power as all that matters, as Miller has done, doesn’t just mean ignoring others’ humanity – it also means ignoring our own human capacity for curiosity and intellectual humility.
Another reminder:
Latest attack threatening President Trump reflects rising political violence in US (The Conversation)
There are several important drivers of political violence at work in the U.S. today, according to my own research and research by other scholars. The United States is currently very politically polarized, meaning that Americans are sharply divided against one another along partisan lines. They are suspicious and hostile toward one another, and this produces a tense and volatile environment for politics and public life. This has produced a “zero-sum” environment in which every election and political contest is a “do or die” moment.
What stands out to me is the moral dimension of polarization in the U.S. Each side views members of the other party not as merely having a different view on politics but rather as evil or immoral. The polarized environment has made political violence more normalized. It has also dampened public backlash against political violence when it occurs. This makes political violence more likely.
Political rhetoric has become much more divisive and violent in nature. This works hand in hand with polarization and helps to further normalize political violence. In particular, when politicians use demonizing or dehumanizing rhetoric to attack their opponents – for example, using words that depict their opponents as subhuman – this fosters extremism and helps motivate extremists to hurt their opponents physically.
Disinformation is also an important driver of political violence. A number of people who have engaged in recent acts of political violence seem to have been motivated by conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation, often gleaned from social media. Disinformation plays a particularly important role in the context of social media communities, where people are exposed to large amounts of disinformation and are hermetically sealed off from other sources that might challenge their worldview. This facilitates radicalization and has been shown to fuel political violence in some cases.
Finally, I think an important factor is also the current assault on democratic norms and democratic institutions in the United States. U.S. democracy is experiencing pressures that are unprecedented in the modern era. This has had a very damaging effect on Americans’ trust in government, confidence in democratic institutions and value for democratic rule itself.
My work shows that individuals who are skeptical about democracy are much more likely to express support or tolerance for political violence.
Chuck Todd posted a video this morning with an indictment of the health of our political life and a plea for a better America. I agree with him, but I doubt if either of us will get the result we want.
No Violence. No Demagoguery. No Kings. (The Bulwark) points out what MAGA is doing with Saturday's incident already.
And we should be proud to be part of a movement that will not be cowed by attempts at intimidation. The pro-democracy movement will resist efforts by this administration and its MAGA minions to use Saturday night as an excuse to criminalize political dissent, silence legitimate criticism, and curtail our civil liberties.
Such efforts got underway within hours of the shooting at the Washington Hilton.
On Sunday morning, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said, “I don’t think this should be lost on anyone . . . that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump—in that same week we learn that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate.”
I’d say in response that I don’t think it should be lost on anyone that this is mere demagoguery in defense of the baseless indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and in defense of using Congress’s investigative powers, as Jordan intends to do, to abet DOJ. Of course Jordan doesn’t quite say that there is any connection between the shooter and the SPLC. But he implies one that should not “be lost on anyone.” This is pretty classic McCarthyism—or, for that matter, Trumpism.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) tried to use Saturday night’s incident as an excuse not just to get new funding for the Department of Homeland Security but to increase the power of the Senate Republican majority: “At a moment of national danger, if Democrats refuse to fund DHS, I would say this would be the time to nuke the filibuster for good.”
In fact, Democrats are refusing to provide new funds not for the whole of DHS but merely for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, neither of which has anything to do with Saturday’s shooting, but which have a lot to do with the administration intimidating opponents. But Trump wants more money for those agencies, and he wants to get rid of the filibuster. This fake “moment of national emergency” is the excuse.
And Speaker Mike Johnson intends to try once again this week to move legislation in the House reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without any real civil liberties safeguards.1 Expect to see him and his lieutenants use this “moment of national danger” to try to overcome opposition to the bill, even though there’s no connection between Section 702 and the events of Saturday night.
More broadly, we should expect a sustained effort in the days and weeks to come to intimidate and silence critics of the Trump administration in the same vein as the notorious National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” issued after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. There will be attempts to justify further investigation, chilling, and criminalizing of speech as part of a crackdown on “domestic terrorism.” According to NSPM-7, one of the “common threads animating this violent conduct” is “anti-Christianity.” So President Trump has already called Cole Tomas Allen “anti-Christian”—though as it happens he was active in a Christian group at college, and spends considerable time in his manifesto trying to justify his actions by appealing to scripture.
The plan is that I am going to the grocery and then to a movie. Trying to break things up today. I want to work ont he blogs today and tomorrow.
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