From the Guardian:
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative, says the 23 June last year will be remembered as a great day in history. It is comparable with Agincourt and Waterloo, he suggests.
I guess that’s how people talk about it in Britain, but it seems to me everywhere else “Waterloo” is synonymous with a crushing defeat. I imagine the Brexit vote will be the same: Considered a victory in Britain, recognised as a crushing defeat everywhere else.
The president’s inner circle have been announcing the dawn of a new Jacksonian era with reality TV star Donald Trump in the role of the populist self-made plutocrat who drove the elites out of the White House. Now:
Trump’s Border Patrol Defies Judge, U.S. Senator at Dulles Airport as His First Constitutional Crisis Unfolds
Border Patrol flouted a federal injunction against Trump’s order, barring lawyers from reaching legal U.S. residents detained at Dulles airport.
UPDATE: Speaking of Jackson, who is that I see in the place of honour to the left of Trump’s desk in the Oval Office? The arch-racist himself…
One of my favourite logic paradoxes (does everyone have favourite logic paradoxes?) goes by the name of The Unexpected Hanging. There are numerous versions, but a standard story is: A man has been condemned to death for some crime. The judge tells him, “Today is Monday. You are to be hanged at noon some day in the next week, but you will not know until the morning of the day of the hanging which day it will be.” The man then reasons, it can’t be Sunday, because if I haven’t been hanged by Saturday noon, I’ll know it must be Sunday, which would contradict the judge’s order. Since it can’t be Sunday, if we get to Friday afternoon, I’ll know it must be Saturday. Again a contradiction. So it can’t be Saturday. Working backward in this way, he is confident that he cannot be hanged at all. But then Thursday dawns, and he is hanged, and he never anticipated it.
I was thinking about this, particularly in the light of this comment by Josh Marshall:
One thing we can say in Donald Trump’s favor, there was no bait and switch. They told us they would do all of this and more.
It’s true, and I’m not surprised. And yet… Trump did say he would ban Muslims. He would build a wall. He would ban abortion. He would revoke the Affordable Care Act. And yet, at the same time, he was saying over and over again, I’m going to be unpredictable. I won’t say what I’m really going to do. More than that, his whole demeanor suggested that you couldn’t believe the specifics of what he was saying. So, in the end, he does exactly what he said he would do, and it actually is somewhat surprising. Continue reading “The unexpected autocracy”
So now we know what was going on while Theresa May was off on her autocrat-ass-kissing tour, and refusing to join the civilised world in condemning the racist US immigration policy: Boris Johnson was negotiating a shameful special exemption for UK citizens. I think this is what they like to call “punching above our weight”.
An anonymous White House official has called the Muslim travel ban a “massive success story”. Assuming this reflects general feeling within the Trump administration, we have to assume that it has accomplished much of what it was intended to accomplish. Which presumably does not include having prevented terror attacks in the US, but does include provoking widespread protests; showing Trump untethered to considerations of custom, law, or humanity; and persuading perhaps wavering foreign governments, particularly in majority-Muslim nations, of the value of pursuing ongoing business relations with Trump, Inc.
Slopes and stairs, contradiction, and protests, according to one article in today’s Sunday Times, about government concerns related to the planned visit in June for the official handover of British sovereignty:
Members of Trump’s inner circle have warned officials and ministers that it would be counterproductive for Charles to ‘lecture’ Trump on green issues and that he will ‘erupt’ if pushed. They want the younger princes, William and Harry, to greet the president instead. Royal aides insist that he should meet Trump.
Senior government officials now believe Charles is one of the most serious ‘risk factors’ for the visit.
Trump’s team is also concerned that he will face a wave of protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets to denounce him…
Downing Street officials claimed the president’s phobia of stairs and slopes led him to grab the prime minister’s hand as they walked down a ramp at the White House.
UPDATE (30/1/2017): I was mentioning this story to someone recently, pointing out that “phobia” is clearly a really bad euphemism for “too old and weak”, which the strongman obviously could not admit to. He replied, “Apparently it IS a phobia – he also has a phobia of slopes, apparently.” I asked what the source was. It came from one of May’s aides, he said. And how would they know? People really have to stop defaulting to the assumption that claims coming from Trump’s circle is more likely to be true than false. On the contrary, information from anyone that has been near Trump is likely tainted.
I assumed that the Trump administration couldn’t possibly have intended for its executive order to exclude legal permanent residents based on their country of origin. Not only is this clearly illegal, but these are clearly sympathetic individuals with established lives in the US that are being blown up by presidential whim, certain to generate bad press for no discernible benefit. But no:
Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.
The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.
Many of our readers will recall the celebrated hoax perpetrated by mathematical physicist Alan Sokal in 1996 against the humanities journal Social Text. Sokal submitted an article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” for an issue on “Science Wars”. The article strung together buzzwords helter-skelter to conclude with a flattering claim of the importance of social theory for natural science. The fact that it was published is cited even today by supercilious physicists and insecure journalists as conclusive proof that academic jargon in the humanities and social sciences is all fake.
Anyway, I was just reading Montaigne’s essay “Du pedantisme” (On pedantry), and found the following anecdote:
J’ay veu chez moy un mien amy, par maniere de passetemps, ayant affaire à un de ceux-cy, contrefaire un jargon de Galimatias, propos sans suitte, tissu de pieces rapportées, sauf qu’il estoit souvent entrelardé de mots propres à leur dispute, amuser ainsi tout un jour ce sot à debattre, pensant tousjours respondre aux objections qu’on luy faisoit. Et si estoit homme de lettres et de reputation, et qui avoit une belle robbe.
I observed at my home a friend of mine making sport of one of these [pedants] by making up a nonsense jargon, propositions with no succession, a patchwork of pieces that had nothing in common except for some buzzwords that he stuck in that related to their topic, and he amused himself a whole day with this crazy debate, always managing to think of new answers to the man’s objections. And this was a greatly reputed man of letters.
after Brexit. Good thing British values aren’t going to be subordinated to Brussels eurocrats!
Dem Führer entgegenarbeiten — Working toward the Leader — was one of the most important neologisms of the early Third Reich. No one really knew what Hitler wanted to do — not even Hitler himself — and the organs of state were in turmoil, certainly incapable of providing rapid guidance at the local level to the government’s plans. So everyone’s obligation was to surmise what the Führer’s ultimate objectives were, and work toward accomplishing it, without needing specific instructions.
Compare that to these recent decisions of the completely apolitical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
CDC abruptly cancels long-planned conference on climate change and health
The Climate and Health Summit, which had been in the works for months, was intended as a chance for public health officials around the country to learn more about the mounting evidence of the risks to human health posed by the changing climate. But CDC officials abruptly canceled the conference before President Trump’s inauguration, sending a terse email on Jan. 9 to those who had been scheduled to speak at the event. The message did not explain the reason behind the decision.
CDC Indefinitely Postponed LGBT Youth Health Summit After Election
To be fair, the reason seems to be that they needed the resources to focus on their conference on disease transmission by refugees and illegal immigrants.
Common Infirmities 