essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with whitebutnotnarrow

Definitely a nonzero chance my rant at the Christian Forums will get nuked, so for the benefit of posterity:

A lot of people here seem to be confused about where the lines of division are drawn, and in particular where liberals might stand. Let me try to help explain more directly, at least for my own position, which some people appear to misunderstand.

More importantly, Trump-fans are missing a great opportunity to see me -- me! -- get aboard one car of the Trump train.

I, essentialsaltes, have unfailingly pointed to one particular political sliver as being antithetical to the concept of America. To wit: willfully ignorant and/or xenophobic Christian Nationalist MAGA.

If Trump obeys Elon Musk's directive to open the border (wider) to skilled Indian (and other foreign) workers, those enemies of America will be angry about it (as they have already demonstrated).

Christian xenophobes like Laura Loomer complained that the White House would smell like curry if Kamala won. Loomer apparently chose the lesser of two evils, so that only the Vice President's residence will smell of curry.

Christian xenophobes like Pastor Joel Webber complained that "it’s not that there are [just] different shades of white and brown [in myneighborhood],” he added. “No, it’s like full, straight-up Hindu garb at our neighborhood swimming pool that my daughter is asking [about and] I’m trying to explain.”

If Donald Trump puts a curry shop on every corner, I will feast well and Loomer and Webber will gnash their teeth at ten times the smell of curry and ten times the sight of full, straight-up Hindu garb.

SAFFRON MAN GOOD!

Likewise, the willfully ignorant often shun higher education and dissuade their children from it, thereby reducing the potential supply of educated, skilled workers.

And they chose for their champion: Ivy League educated Donald Trump, who sent most of his kids to his alma mater (sorry, Eric). Barron is not at an Ivy, but is at elite liberal NYU in elite liberal NYC.

And his Ivy League running mate (with an Ivy League wife).

And what prize did the MAGA booboisie win?

A South African atheist techbro scion of wealth reached for the largest megaphone on the face of the planet and called them all r-words!

Some of my read-books have piled up for various reasons. Anyhoo.

Speculative Los Angeles (Akashic Books): Alas this was one I finished first and remember least about. There's a dedication to Octavia Butler and it goes downhill into mediocrity town after that.

The Best of RA Lafferty: One of the best things about the book are the varied introductions from everybody from Gaiman to Patton Oswalt to Harlan's original introduction from Dangerous Visions. But I wonder at the story selection -- it seems to favor stories where Lafferty really goes off the narrative rails. I like Lafferty when he's funny, and when he's absurd, but many of these wander too far into incoherence. I'm not sure it's either his best or his most representative. But still plenty to love. One thread that does come together well is (him being an Oklahoma writer) his way of tying the Native experience to the alien experience.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I seem to have read most of On the Road In the Air, which doesn't seem quite right. I don't see what the fuss is about. Sure, I get the allure of the open road, but otherwise it's kind of interchangeable medley of feckless losers getting drunk, chasing tail and committing petty crimes.

A Convenient Hatred: The HIstory of Antisemitism by Phyllis Goldstein

Not a cheerful read by any means, but interesting to see things traced from Roman times through 'Christ-killers' to the blood libel, to the Protocols to the Holocaust and later times. As much as the story is often about individuals (or mobs) who scapegoat the Jews, it's also interesting to see some of the allies who made efforts here or there to turn back the tide of hatred (seldom for long, alas)

[Soldiers restored order in Karlsruhe after civil nrest and anonymous messages called for a massacre of Jews] A "new message read, "Emperors, kings, dukes, beggards, Catholics, and Jews are all human and as such our equals." To emphasize that idea, the grand-duke of Baden showed his solidarity with the city's Jews by spending the night at the home of a prominent Jew. The gesture helped restore calm to the city."

I found both of these in the LA Time list of books about Los Angeles in the speculative literature sublist.

After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley is a very odd work. Something like Citizen Kane smashed into The Last Coin with a chunk of mostly annoying philosophy crammed into the middle. While it skewers a certain vision of Hollywood as it may have been in the 1930s, it rides off on its own hobbyhorse quite too far to be recognizable as LA. A crass Los Angeles millionaire funds various charities and research activities, but his obsession is eternal life. I really have to wonder if Jim Blaylock is referencing this novel in The Last Coin, or if it's just a coincidence based on the longevity of carp.

Perhaps my favorite passage has a nice LA nod to a Forest Lawn-esque cemetary:

Was it possible, Jeremy asked Iiimself, that such an object existed? It was certainly not probable. The Beverly Pantheon lacked a verisimilitude, was something entirely beyond his powers to invent. The fact that the idea of it was now in his mind proved, therefore, that he must really have seen it. He shut his eyes against the landscape and recalled to his memory the details of that incredible reality. The external architecture, modelled on that of BoeckUn’s ‘Toteninsel.’ The circular vestibule. The replica of Rodin’s ‘Le Baiser,’ illuminated by con- cealed pink floodlights. With its flights of black marble stairs. The seven-story columbarium, the endless gal- leries, its tiers on tiers of slab-sealed tombs. The bronze and silver urns of the cremated, like athletic trophies. The stained-glass windows after Burne-Jones. The texts in- scribed on marble scrolls. The Perpetual Wuriitzer crooning on every floor. The sculpture . . . That was the hardest to believe, Jeremy reflected, be- hind closed eyelids. Sculpture almost as ubiquitous as the Wurlitrer. Statues wherever you turned your eyes. Hundreds of them, bought wholesale, one would guess, from some monumental masonry concern at Carrara or Pietrasanta. All nudes, all female, all exuberandy nubile. The sort of statues one would expect to see in the re- ception-room of a high-class brothel m Rio de Janeiro. ...
Statues of young ladies crouching ; young ladies using both hands to be modest; young ladies stretching, wnthing, calli- pygously stooping to tie their sandals, reclining. Young ladies with doves, with panthers, with other young ladies, ■with upturned eyes expressive of the soul’s awakening. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ proclaimed the scrolls. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd ; therefore shall I want nothing.’ Nothing, not even Wurhtzer, nor even girls in tightly buckled belts. ‘Death is swallowed up in viaory’ — the ■victory no longer of the spirit but of the body, the well-fed body, for ever youthful, immortally athletic, indefatigably sexy. The Moslem paradise had had copulations six centuries long. In this new Christian heaven, progress, no doubt, would have stepped up the period to a millennium and added the joys of everlasting tennis, eternal golf and swimming.

But on the whole not a winner.

Greener than you Think (1947) by Ward Moore turned out to be a delightful discovery. A much broader parody than After Many a Summer, it's a disaster story of a scientist who invents a tonic to make lawns grow. And does it ever. One lady buys the first batch and from one lawn springs an earth devouring monster of green. Not a lot of detail about Los Angeles, but a few namechecks that help Angelenos mark the spread of the grass:

The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, the great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was threatened with disruption.

Oodles of casual sexism and racism, although often with a wry touch than seems to point the finger more at the haters:

Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen—in conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions—was at the bottom of the grass.

Our protagonist wears many hats in this somewhat overlong story, but spends much of it as a journalist covering the spread, who is ordered out by an editor that would make J Jonah Jameson happy with his level of smack-talk:

The Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose possession I gravely doubt.

And one final epitaph for LA, courtesy of Time magazine:

Time, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone; swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass

Like I said, a bit overlong, but pleasantly zany.

Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosely is the creation story of Easy Rawlins, covering some Louisiana incidents largely instigated by his friend Mouse. There's some blood, guts, chicanery and sex, but the story as a whole doesn't amount to anything. Just fleshing out the biography.

I confess I only got through about half of Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The diffuse story-telling just isn't grabbing me. A lot of science fiction futures are really about our present, and that's certainly true of Goliath. Rather than white flight emptying out inner cities leaving hollowed-out unmanageable cores, now the rich have gone offworld leaving behind an earth in bad shape. And now there's a whiff of gentrification as some of the offworlders come back. I love a good allegory, but this one doesn't seem to have any point. Granted I didn't stick with it all the way to its destination.

Christianity Made Me Talk Like and Idiot, by Seth Andrews

I got this for free for paying my dues in American Atheists. (Signed, no less). But the title and the book is a bit of a cheat. Andrews was once an avid Christian, and even a Christian radio broadcaster. But a dozen years ago, when he was around 40, he gave up religion.

So the book could have been extremely valuable, hearing his own story from the inside of what it was like before. And how now he realizes that Christianity made him say stupid things. But the book is nearly all about how Christianity makes other people say stupid things. As such, most of it is not very interesting. Any internet atheist could write that book (waves). There are some parts where he talks more directly about his former life, and when he gets on that topic, he tends to express more compassion for other victims of extreme Christianity. But these touches are largely wiped away by how mean-spirited most of the rest of the book is (waves).

Xander Schauffele, citizen of Earth, wins Olympic golf gold

The meaning of this turn of Olympic golf ended up being that the gold medal went to that man for all nations, the polyglot delight from San Diego who stood for one national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but could have stood for several. This 27-year-old with the Californian ease and the Taiwanese mother raised in Japan and the French-German father finally won a big-deal tournament after inveterate contention in golf majors, whereupon he gave an Olympian answer to an Olympian question about the values of multi-nationalism and travel upon this planet.

“I think that I can just use myself as an example,” Xander Schauffele said after one-shot win over Rory Sabbatini, the South Africa-born, 45-year-old multinational playing for Slovakia. “I’m the only natural-born citizen in my family [of four], being born in the United States … I think that being very international, it’s taught me a lot about different cultures and it’s made me very understanding of different cultures. I think that if everyone sort of had the ability to travel more and experience other cultures, they would be more willing to get along, potentially.”

He could look over at the bronze medalist and say, as an American, “Yeah, my fellow countryman right next to me. My mom was born in Taiwan, so actually by blood I’m half-Taiwanese.”

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In Orange County, Anti-Vaccine Activists Attack Top Elected Official For His Vietnamese Heritage

But at this week’s unruly meeting, anti-vax sentiments turned into a torrent of racist and xenophobic tirades against [Republican] Supervisor Andrew Do, the board’s chair, who is of Vietnamese descent. In his role as board chair, he has been directing the county's COVID prevention efforts.

One speaker who identified himself as Tyler Durden, a character from the film Fight Club, blasted Vietnam’s COVID quarantine policies and said to Do: “You come to my country, and you act like one of these communist parasites. I ask you to go the f—k back to Vietnam!”

Do was a refugee whose family fled the communist regime in Vietnam and has lived in the U.S. for 46 years.

Another speaker said: “You have the audacity to come here and try to turn our country, Andrew Do, into a communist country. Shame on you!”

“You talked about escaping communism this morning,” said yet another speaker. “Why are you bringing communism to Orange County? We want our freedoms. We're Americans, we have freedoms.”

Do is an outspoken critic of communism and perhaps the best-known Vietnamese American leader in Southern California. Some critics say his measures to combat COVID have not been aggressive enough compared to neighboring Los Angeles County, and they find it ironic that anti-vaccine activists are focused on him.

"I think most people look at Andrew Do and say he's certainly not at the vanguard of some of these efforts to limit COVID," Min said.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/973217.html

Jonathan Lethem started his career with a kangaroo detective, and I was on board. But after he moved back to New York, he has become a lot more New York, so Chronic City was a bit of a tough go for me, even if it's sort of a shadow Manhattan with hypnotic Macguffins and an escaped tiger (or is it?). It was also strange to read this at the same time as rereading Blaylock's The Last Coin. Both Blaylock and Lethem have some Phil Dickian influences, but I'm much more in tune with the wild parrots of Seal Beach than the Black Mirror version of Seinfeld. But as always, flashes of genius in the writing.

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White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, by Anthea D. Butler

Occasionally unfair and overly polemic, this still provides some great historical information on American evangelicalism, providing some great 'receipts' in the form of quotes from the mouths of prominent evangelicals. A real eye opener is a speech given by black evangelist Tom Skinner in 1970 at the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s conference. “To a great extent, the evangelical church in America supported the status quo. It supported slavery; it supported segregation; it preached against any attempt of the black man to stand on his own two feet.” This was around the time that Falwell and Bob Jones ran segregated schools. Butler would have us believe evangelicalism ignored Skinner's call and hasn't changed one iota since then, and she disregards as tokenism the few nods and appearances of blacks at more recent events. While I agree what a lot of what I've seen of modern evangelicalism from Obama to today has been really ugly, I think there has been at least three iotas of positive change in the past 50 years. Far too little and far too slow, obviously. Some notes I took through the book:

Here are Skinner’s words: Understand that for those of us in the Black community, it was not the evangelical who came and taught us our worth and dignity as Black men. It was not the Bible-believing fundamentalist who stood up and told us that Black was beautiful. It was not the evangelical who preached to us that we should stand on our own two feet and be men, be proud that Black was beautiful, and that God could work his life out through our redeemed Blackness. Rather, it took Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, and the Brothers to declare to us our dignity.

[Billy Graham] was especially disdainful after the March on Washington in August 1963, when he made the aforementioned remarks about King’s “Dream” speech—that it would take the second coming of Christ before we would see white children walk hand in hand with Black children. This disdain for King and the civil rights movement connected Graham to other prominent evangelicals of the 1950s and 1960s. Billy James Hargis, a fundamentalist who embraced segregation and anticommunism, was especially hard on King and communism, invariably linking the two together. In his book series One Minute before Midnight! (A Christian Americanism Book in Three Parts), Hargis predicted the imminent fall of America to communism if souls were not saved and communism not defeated. ... communism held another threat to conservative Christians of the 1950s: it would upset the “social order,” a reference to racial desegregation. Describing Martin Luther King Jr. as a “Stinking Racial Adjuratory and a communist,” Hargis believed, like Carl McIntire and others who promoted Americanism, that desegregation violated biblical principles.

An unyielding segregationist, Criswell declared in a message delivered to the South Carolina Baptist Evangelism conference in February 1956, that “true Ministers must passionately resist government mandated desegregation because it is a denial of ALL that we believe in.”

Jerry Falwell gave his “Ministers and Marches” speech, in which he condemned Martin Luther King Jr. and other ministers engaged in protesting and marching for civil rights, on March 21, 1965, the same day on which King and other Black and white ministers were walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Falwell criticized the civil rights movement, declaring that “preachers are not called to be politicians but soul winners.”

Pannell, a product of what he called “mulatto” parents, also pointedly addressed intermarriage, a core issue for evangelicals. In a chapter called “Now about Your Daughter,” Pannell wrote poignantly of evangelicals’ fear of sex and “negro” men: “The ghost of negro sex prowess and white female purity still mocks us in the closets of our minds. Neither Protestant theology nor education has dispelled it. Bible Belt Fundamentalism, which served as midwife when it was born, serves even now to nurse it in its old age.”

Dr. Bob Jones III spoke of this admission in a conversation with a reporter from the Greenville News in 1971, remarking, “Orientals have been accepted to Bob Jones for quite some time, and … they [have] accepted the university stipulation that they could not date across racial lines. The reason that blacks had not been admitted before … was that the board believed unmarried blacks would refuse to accept the rule (against interracial dating), or agitate to change it if they were admitted.”

[Butler being spot on] Evangelical grievances, anger, and disappointment in the wake of 9/11, as well as the election of America’s first Black president, pushed believers into an open, belligerent racism that culminated in their wholesale embrace of the man they would call “King Cyrus”: Donald Trump. The journey to Trump is a story of how whiteness and racism combined to make evangelicals a potent voting bloc awash in racism

[Butler going too far] I know the answer to the question obsessively pondered by the popular press, pundits, and even experts in the study of American religion: Why do people who identify as evangelicals vote over and over again for political figures who in speech and deed do not evince the Christian qualities that evangelicalism espouses? My answer is that evangelicalism is not a simply religious group at all. Rather, it is a nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/972770.html

Galileo & the Science Deniers is a solid biography of Galileo by Mario Livio, an actual working astronomer. I can't say that his scientific background adds a whole lot to the mix, but it can't hurt. He does bring an interesting flair for art (a subject of some interest to Galileo himself -- dare we call him a renaissance man?). One great illustration is a painting of the Virgin Mary by Cigoli, which features the BVM standing on a moon with craters and shadows. It may be the first such depiction of the Moon, and likely inspired by Galileo's sketches.

The history is presented quite credibly and with plenty of primary sources. Inevitably, it leads to Galileo's trials and tribulations with the Inquisition. It's not hard to draw a very short, denialist line between the Inquisition and modern day science deniers, but this was sadly a disappointment in the book. It's clearly an afterthought, with a paragraph or so wedged in at the end of each chapter to try to give the book some current relevance.

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I wish Mediocre had managed to be mediocre, but in fact it's just not good.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo.

One might think the book would be about white male America, but that's probably not even a majority of the book.

I guess I was hoping for something more sociological, or psychological. How white men think more highly of themselves than other groups, regardless of actual competence or status. An in-depth analysis of Lake Wobegon, where all our (white male) children are above average. Or an in-depth look at the improbable successes of the Homer Simpsons of the world, especially as contrasted with the Frank Grimes of the world (replacing Grimey with nonwhite nonmale equivalents). Honestly, these comedic takes have more insight into mediocre white men than this book.

Maybe I was just expecting the wrong content. If the book had been titled Shitty Things White Dudes have done in History, it would have been more accurate, and I could have saved my time. A lot of the book is really more of a polemic for a particular brand of progressivism, without much about the titular mediocre white dude (MWD). One of the first targets is Bernie Sanders, and his failure to be progressive enough on racial issues. While this is an accurate criticism, this is hardly about Bernie being mediocre. The author almost latches onto something with a discussion of Bernie Bros, but beyond mentioning hateful tweets from that corner, there is very little analysis of that phenomenon and how it relates to MWD. Any news article you might have read about some fraction of Bernie Bros voting Trump is more insightful than this book.

There's a long section that is basically a glowing biography of each of the four members of The Squad. While it's a great thing that these women who don't look like the politicians of yesteryear are succeeding, these encomia tell me nothing about MWD.

I don't really even know what to make of her schizophrenic treatment of academia and the NFL. Especially the latter since she claims little knowledge of the sport, so the presentation is somewhat shallow, apart from a focus on the Colin Kaepernick affair (worth discussing, but how does it relate to MWD?), as opposed to, say, Doug Williams. Or Brian's Song, fer crissakes.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/971920.html

From a Scientific American article on the 'self-domestication' of human beings to be hypersocial.

Love is a Contact Sport

Despite the evolutionary paradoxes of human nature, the perception of who belongs in our group is malleable. H. sapiens as a species has already demonstrated its capacity to expand the concept of group membership into the thousands and millions.

It can be extended further. The best way to diffuse conflict among groups is to diminish the perceived sense of threat through social interaction. If feeling threatened makes us want to protect others in our group, non-threatening contact between groups allows us to expand the definition of who our group is.

White children who went to school with black children in the 1960s were more likely, as they grew up, to support interracial marriage, have black friends, and be willing to welcome black people into their neighborhoods.

...

Most policies are enacted with the assumption that a change in attitude will lead to a change in behavior, but in the case of intergroup conflict, it is the altered behavior -- in the form of human contact -- that will most likely change minds. The self-domestication hypothesis explains why we as a species evolved to relate to others. Making contact between people of different ideology, culture or race is a universally effective reminder that we all belong to a single group called H. sapiens.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/969469.html

Oh my, where to begin?

I would very much like Paul Verhoeven to make a film of this in much the same vein as his excellent take on Heinlein's Starship Troopers, because some deep-level parody is the only way to fully enjoy this tale.

1950s American Engineer Man builds a bomb shelter when the Big Whoops arrives. Inside are AEM, his fat alcoholic wife, his feckless son whom he's putting through law school, his plucky daughter, her plucky friend from school, and a Negro servant. AEM is large and in charge and will shoot anyone who dares disobey him. They're all alive due to his forethought despite this terrible catastrophe. But, when you think about it, is it really all that bad?

AEM: "Well it's hard to take the long view when you are crouching in a shelter and wondering how long ou can hold out. But Barbara [plucky school chum -- I'm not sure this is before or after AEM has had post-atomic war coitus with her] I've been worried for years about our country. It seems to me that we have been breeding slaves -- and I believe in freedom. This war may have turned the tide. This may be the first war in history which kills the stupid rather than the bright and able...

the boys in service are as safe or safer than civilians. And of civilians those who used their heads and made preparations stand a far better chance. Not every case, but on the average, and that will improve the breed. When it's over, things will be tough, and that will improve the breed still more. For years the surest way of surviving has been to be utterly worthless and breed a lot of worthless kids. All that will change."
...
Barbara: I suppose you're right. No, I know you're right. ... Killing the poorest third is just good genetics...

--

Ultimately they leave the shelter [I'm not sure whether this is before or after AEM's daughter tell him that of the three men present, she would most like to have sex with him.] and they've been blasted into the future, which is fortunate since it's not too radioactive. So AEM makes a few more orders and organizes civilization, until they are improbably picked up by the people of the future. With the Northern Hemisphere wiped out by the Whoops, the earth is now ruled by dark-skinned people with white-skinned slaves [I'm not sure whether this is before or after half the case has used the n-word]. Further twaddle ensues. I'll give it this -- it's reasonably engaging and as each section of plot kind of plays itself out, Heinlein comes up with something else interesting to happen. But the whole thing feels.... well, let me just quote a bit more.

[AEM] concentrated on being glad that Barbara was a woman who never chattered when her man wanted her to be quiet.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/966521.html

I heard he's doing great things these days, so I thought I'd pick up this biography.

It's a good one, but it helps to have great source material. I think the most surprising thing about the early chapters was how different slavery was from my conception. Though this is no doubt due to Douglass being in Maryland within throwing distance of the Mason Dixon line, rather than in the Deep South. Rather than working for years in the same field, he moved around quite a lot, both with the family that owned him, but also being 'rented out' to other families who needed labor. Later on, he learned a trade in caulking for shipbuilding and essentially lived on his own, paying for his own food and lodging, while sending the majority of his pay back to his owner.

Ultimately, of course, he escaped, becoming a major figure in the abolitionist movement, and renowned for his oratory. One of the great details is that one of the books he used to learn to read was a book of famous speeches, and he apparently absorbed it, cover to cover. Some of the ancient Roman speeches regarding slavery inspired his own abolitionist thinking.

While occasionally bogged down in petty rivalries within the abolitionist movement, Douglass also had a broad scope and was one of the many people involved in both abolition and women's suffrage. This was a two-way door and many (white) women were also supportive of abolition. This didn't always go down well, or be reported fairly:

"the tenth-anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was moved after being barred from the Broadway Tabernacle), reporters took salacious note of what they chose to see as the 'semi-flirtations' in a meeting 'chiefly composed of members of the fair sex,' but attended as well by 'sable-complexioned sons of Africa'"
...
"On August 26, 1842, when [Abby] Kelley began her address to an antislavery convention in Rochester, in the Third Presbyterian Church, the minister was so appalled that a woman was speaking publicaly, and ordered the small gathering out of the building."

In 1860, after Lincoln's election, things were clearly pretty hot. This Winslow Homer print gives an idea of the brawl that occurred when a commemoration of John Brown was gatecrashed by members of the Constitutional Union Party. They were against secession, but not anti-slavery.

After the war, Douglass was far too optimistic about how ex-slaves and black people would just enter society. He seemed to think abolition and the vote would cure everything. I don't know that he had much experience of the Deep South, but that slowly dawned on him as lynching became common. Also, I think he may have underestimated his own genius and success. There is a whiff of that Bill Cosby tone of, if you all just got off your lazy butts, you'd be as successful as I am. I think he should have learned faster from the varied fortunes of his children, who with many advantages and riding his coattails, were always something of a disappointment to him.

Another poor choice was getting involved in the Freedman's Bank, which failed not long after he joined its board and lent his popularity to it. "Some scholars claim that the failure of the Freedman's Bank and the loss of their savings led to a distrust of all banking institutions for several generations among the black community."

Getting back to being out of touch. "Those with their eyes open to the oppression of black laborers in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1879 saw Douglass as simply wrong when he claimed that "the conditions … in the Southern States are steadily improving." His prediction "that the colored man there will ultimately realize the fullest measure of liberty and equality" was cold comfort in 1879."

His ambassadorship to Haiti was also somewhat mixed, although he seems to have done well when faced with some autocratic rulers and undiplomatic US military, who wanted a naval base there. Later he helped put on the Haitian pavilion at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Though there was kind of a shameful scene when the expo held a Colored People's Day and stocked up on watermelon. Many blacks boycotted it, but Douglass apparently took the opportunity to give a corker of a speech.

"The introductions over, Douglass rose once more, put on his glasses and began somberly reading a paper, "THe Race Problem in America." Suddenly he was interrupted by 'jeers and catcalls' from white men in the rear of the crowd. In the August heat, the old man tried to go on, but the mocking persisted; his hand shook. Painfully, Dunbar witnessed his idol's persecution; the great orator's voice 'faltered.' Then, to the young poet's surprise and delight, the old abolitionist threw his papers down, parked his glasses on them, and eyes flashing, pushed his hand through his great mane of white hair. Then he spoke: 'Full, rich and deep came the sonorous tones, compelling attention, drowning out the catcalls as an organ would a penny whistle.' 'Men talk of the Negro Problem,' Douglass roared. 'There is no Negro Problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution.'"

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/965530.html

Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country doesn't have all that much to do with Lovecraft, but plenty to do with the mid-century experience of racism for black people in America. Certainly, Lovecraft's own ugly racism is mentioned, but not much time is spent on him or his work, and while the plot of the book is full of occult happenings, it is not particularly Lovecraftian. So... I feel a bit suckered by the title. Nevertheless, the novel is still an enjoyable combination of several interrelated story sections focusing on different members of an extended black family and friends.

Soon to be an HBO TV series.

--

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne purposes to define and describe misogyny. The book was chosen by the Resistance Book Club, but it may have been biting off more than any of us wanted to chew. My heart sank when I discovered it was a work of academic philosophy. And it does often veer off into minutiae not of interest to me, but efficacious as a soporific (as I found on long plane flights, to my serendipitous joy).

Manne doesn't like the dictionary definition of misogyny (and if taken to extremes, I agree with her), so she sets out to find a suitable thing to which the label misogyny could be usefully applied. I also agree with her general program and she has identified something worthy of discussion -- namely the enforcement of patriarchy. So her definition is "misogyny upholds the social norms of patriarchies by policing and patrolling them". Or per Wiki: "misogyny enforces patriarchy by punishing women who deviate from patriarchy."

But almost everywhere, the concept seems to be fluid, the illustrative examples either maddeningly absent/theoretical or misguided, and the point consequently muddled. Though some of the muddle may be my inability (or lack of desire) to penetrate the dense text.

"Rather than conceptualizing misogyny from the point of view of the accused, at least implicitly, we might move to think of it instead from the point of view of its targets or victims. In other words, when it comes to misogyny, we can focus on the hostility women face in navigating the social world, rather than the hostility men (in the first instance) may or may not feel in their encounters with certain women... Advantages of this approach would include that it 1.avoids psychologism … [and] makes misogyny more epistemologically tractable in the ways that matter here, by enabling us to invoke a “reasonable woman” standard … we can ask whether a girl or woman who the environment is meant to accommodate might reasonably interpret some encounter, aspect, or practice therein as hostile"

I don't see that substituting the psychology of the victim (indeed a hypothetical reasonable woman victim, whose reasonableness and perception of 'hostility' are no doubt predicated to some extent on our own psychologies) eliminates psychologism from the equation.

Manne quite rightly criticized some of Trump's statements, but let's keep her definition of misogyny in mind as we review her examples:

"Rosie O’Donnell (very funnily) questioned his moral authority to pardon Miss Universe for indulging in underage drinking: Trump called O’Donnell a “pig” and a “dog,” among other epithets. Carly Fiorina competed with Trump for the Republican nomination: he implied that her face was not presidential-level attractive. Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, pressed Trump about his history of insulting women: Trump fumed that she had blood coming out of her eyes and “wherever,”"

Are Trump's insults attempts to enforce the patriarchy? Or are they simply juvenile responses to perceived attacks on him personally (see also Sleepy Joe, Low Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, Cryin' Chuck, Conflicted Bob Mueller)? Perhaps a case could be made for Fiorina, since she was trying to usurp the presidency from men, but Rosie and Kelly were doing their jobs as TV people.

One could say that they were 'assaulting the patriarchy' by having the feminine gall to speak up on a national stage (the prerogative of men) and needed to be put in their place. But then we are left with the consequence that telling Ann Coulter to shut up is now automatically misogyny by definition.

Certainly the particular ways that Trump chose to express himself are gross and gendered. One might be tempted to call it misogynistic, but Manne's chosen definition prevents that.

I gave up when she constructed her own version of 'humanism' and then alternately agreed with it and tore it apart. From a certain perspective, I can see how that's necessary for her to develop her own ideas and contrast them with other possibilities, but... it was not necessary for me.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/963850.html

This got picked up by the NYT/PBS Newshour's Now Read This book club. It's been an interesting experience seeing a more general audience deal with a speculative work. I think there was more than the usual amount of "Nope. I'm skipping this one." And even among those who joined in, there was a surprising amount of "I don't understand what's going on!"

I don't think it's that inaccessible, but I wonder how much I have been 'trained' to understand modern speculative fiction by having consumed a lot of it and followed its progression. Maybe if you haven't read Anne McCaffrey and Katherine Kurtz, it's hard to absorb The Fifth Season. But again, I don't think it's that hard to take in, even if the world and reality is very different from our own.

In fact, it's so different that I'm somewhat surprised so many people think the book has some trenchant relevance to discussions of climate and race. I mean, surely it's there - persecution and control, and largescale climate effects on an entire world - but apart from very loose analogies, it doesn't seem very applicable.

The story itself is interesting and engaging as you learn more about the world, and its characters. But... not enough for me to go on for a whole trilogy. Another common complaint in the book club (and a merited one) is the choice of a first book of a trilogy.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/963801.html

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Obviously as a White Dude (TM), I'm set up for failure when criticizing a book about how white people can't handle honest discussion about race and racism. About 80% of the book is entirely unobjectionable (to me), but there are bits that rankle.

First up, I'm not sure what use the book is. Part of DiAngelo's job is moderating racial sensitivity training seminars at the behest of corporations or other groups. A fair amount of the book really seems to be her complaining about her job. "And then there was this white person behaving like this at my seminar. Wypipo, amirite?"

The book does do a good job of exploring and describing the various defense mechanisms that white people use when confronted with unpleasant truths. But is this news to anyone? I guess I was hoping more for strategies for dealing with those defenses when encountered in the world (or inside). But there's precious little about solutions, just a clinical description of the symptoms of the disease. OK, this is perhaps valuable, but I expect it is old news for anyone likely to pick up the book and read it, and the people who would learn a thing or two are not likely to pick it up.

Next up, nomenclature. Now, I understand the use of "racism" to mean something that might be more fully described as "systemic racism" or "institutional racism". I'm cool with that, but it seems like it would save time in her workshops if she used those longer terms, since it seems like she spends a great deal of time fighting against the 'common' understanding of racism. Especially since the actual situations that come up in her seminars are a lot more like common racism than systemic racism. She's not being brought in to address redlining, but to address people being nasty to Suzi in the breakroom. So there's some equivocation on the use of "racism" in the book.

Similarly, she blithely asserts that American culture is a culture of white supremacy, that most schools are segregated, and "For example, although we are taught that women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it. Not until the 1960s, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women—regardless of race—granted full access to suffrage."

I think a lot of these blanket statements need some asterisks. I mean groups who identify as "white supremacists" mean something different than the systemic racism that already exists in our culture. To call them both "white supremacy" is again equivocation (or at least cause for confusion). The 2018 elections showed that there are still some limits to voting access. If we can only celebrate when "full access" has been granted, then we still cannot celebrate women's suffrage. By no means do I want to minimize the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South -- quite the opposite -- but this hairsplitting seems absurd.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/961052.html

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, by Daniel Dennett (my spirit animal)

In many ways this book ties together a lot of Dennett's idea from different areas of his interest: primarily evolution and consciousness. I think he tries too hard to smash them together into something that looks like a broader worldview, but I'm not sure he succeeds. I'm definitely on board with much of what he says, but then the intervening spit and glue that holds it together just doesn't come together into a picture for me. My verdict: just go read Consciousness Explained one more time. His best book on his hardest subject.

When the Sleeper Wakes, by HG Wells

One of those ancient SF stories that everyone recognizes and no one reads. And now I know why. Our hero falls into a strange trance and lives on through centuries. His cousin providentially invests his money wisely, and When the Sleeper Awakes, he owns half the planet. The planet is being run, more or less, by a council of capitalist pigs, while The Sleeper has sympathies with the downtrodden people.

Wells gets some things extremely right about the future: windmills for power generation, annoying advertising, capitalist pigs. And of course, many ludicrously wrong things: moving sidewalks instead of streets to carry people around.

Anyway, after the Sleeper Awakes, there is a far too overlong section of tedious chases and alarums as the people and the powers that be fight, while the Sleeper is largely a figurehead or in hiding. And then finally, the powers that be try that one thing -- that last straw to break the camel's back and get the Sleeper to exert his power and influence to overthrow the status quo. The powers that be attempt to use black people as policemen.

“I have been thinking about these negroes. I don’t believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do not want any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Even about Paris—”

Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. “I am not bringing negroes to London,” he said slowly. “But if—”

“You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens,” said Graham [the Sleeper - aka the Master]. “In that matter I am quite decided.”

Ostrog, after a pause, decided not to speak, and bowed deferentially.

Guess who orders black policemen despite explicit instructions not to?

“These negroes must not come to London,” said Graham. “I am Master and they shall not come.”

Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two attendants close behind him. “Why not?” asked Ostrog.

“White men must be mastered by white men.

So the Sleeper puts on his MBGA hat and puts a stop to this nonsense. As long as I'm spoiling this craptastrophic book, he also gets the girl with the goo-goo eyes and trembling lips.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/960488.html

This is the current Now Read This bookclub from the PBS Newshour/NYT.

Subtitled "How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World" I guess I was hoping for something like Guns, Germs, & Steel with a focus on the US and History.

Instead, we get Kaplan pontificating from his armchair about all sorts of things, usually about how people are in the middle of the country are fatties.

Strange that I should say 'from his armchair' since part of the writing of the book involved him travelling from coast to coast, to experience things at ground level. But he didn't seem to learn anything at all. As I wrote in the bookclub:

I'm just disappointed that it's a voyage of pontification rather than a voyage of discovery. Since he's an established thinker, he's allowed to have his own ideas, but he seems so incurious about actually finding anything out about the people he passes by. He could have written this book from his armchair given how little he seems to learn from his travels. The trip is superfluous except to confirm his preexisting biases.

How I imagine his state of mind on the trip:

Gotta pee, but I have to get to Mt. Rushmore by Wednesday. Just gonna stop here to pee, no chit chat. OMG, it smells like deep fryer oil. Jeez, those people are fat. Pretty much what I expected.
[uses restroom]
Hey that lady's dandling a baby on her knee! And that guy has a VFW hat. That's the kind of local color that will really make this book sing. Back to the road!

--

Once he arrives in San Diego, he gets a boner looking at the Navy fleet, and then segues into the last third of the book, which is an entirely separate pontification on the US exerting its power in the world.

One of Kaplan's few attempts to actually talk about how geography affects history is to note correctly that once the Native Americans had been steamrollered out of the way, America is quite a safe place, geographically. Oceans on two sides, and a long border with polite people on the other side to the North. Kaplan does worry quite a bit about the teeming hordes of brown people to the south, but still pretty safe. And this safety allows us to smite evil-doers here and there around the world, spreading peace and joy and democracy. And Kaplan seems to be quite eager for America to bestow these militant blessings on others around the world.

Kind of creepily, he seems to think of this as some way of atoning for the atrocities committed against the Native Americans. Someone else in the bookclub pointed out a sentence that begins "Manifest destiny may have been raw and cruel and rapacious, but..."

Sorta like 90% of sentences that start, "I'm not racist/sexist, but..."

While I don't entirely disagree with Kaplan's thesis that America is relatively safe and therefore has the power to potentially do good in the world, I don't share his conviction that we automatically succeed in doing good whenever we flex our military.

Despite being mean-spirited and wrong-headed, Kaplan also found time to be profoundly confusing instead of profound.

"The world itself has now become America’s frontier. And that has been both a blessing and a scourge. Omaha’s spatial arrangement offers a disturbing, almost subconscious explanation for America’s imperial ambition."

--

On the plus side, I learned that Pittsburgh is named after Pitt the Elder, and Zion National Park was originally named Mukuntuweap.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/959291.html

Got turned onto this by the joint PBS NewsHour/NYT Book Review reading group, newly started up for 2018. I remember interviews with Ward about this or other books and was at least intrigued, and this got me over the edge.

Sing, Unburied, Sing won a National Book Award and other such prizes, so it's decidedly in the 10% of things that are not crap (per Sturgeon's Law).

It relates the story of an extended black(ish) family in modern Mississippi: Voudon-adjacent grandma, salt of the earth Grandpa, shot by white people dead son, negligent mom daughter, initially imprisoned white baby-daddy, adolescent grandson, and toddler granddaughter.

On the surface, daughter takes her kids to meet baby-daddy when he gets out of prison and brings him back. Plenty of side-orders of family dysfunction and racism from baby-daddy's family.

Also, the supernatural. Having seen a number of people bloviate about what the ghosts 'mean', I'm here (safe in my blog) to set them straight.

Yes, they have a role to play in what the author is trying to say. But that's not the same as being able to dismiss them from the story as 'symbols'.

When we look at The Christmas Carol, we can see that the Ghost of Christmas Past has utility for Dickens for setting up Scrooge's regrets over the past. Christmas Present is a guide for how to enjoy life in the now. But this is not a story of Scrooge having some fanciful dreams and waking up cured. In the reality of the story, the ghosts show him things he could not have known (as if Scrooge gave a shit about where bob Cratchit lived and the names of his superfluous progeny).

Similarly here, we can't (I assert) interpret the ghosts as figments or imaginations of the other characters. They are real, yet also have meaning to the overall story.

(This is as opposed to pure fantasy, where of course ghosts or elves or what-have-you are real, and no one doubts it, and they are 'just' characters.)

One ghost is laid to rest, and fights off an attempt by another ghost to usurp him. The other ghost (I deem) has to be laid to rest by someone else. That ghost has seen 'the Promised Land', but it's not for him.

At the crudest level, the ghosts are symbols of deaths that can be laid at the feet of racism. And the other thing we see is that they are legion. They may not have a familial connection to the rest of the story, but there are out there, a nebulous cloud or tree of spirits.

These (I deem) are the Trayvon Martins, and Freddie Grays, and Philando Castiles, and Tamir Rices, and... a throng that is both perceptible and imperceptible.

I enjoyed the book. It's not perfect by any means, despite the plaudits. Most glaringly, though written first person (from different characters' perspectives in each chapter), the characters typically speak in a rather vocabulary-sparse Southern dialect, but 'think' in terms that often become disbelief-shatteringly poetic and authorish.

Looking at the book club, the other reaction that is perplexing to me is that certain characters/situations are too realistically depressing and nasty for some. "I'm sorry, this is too truthful for me to read. I had to set it aside. Where is my white wine spritzer?"

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/954143.html

Tuesday

OldWiseGuy's link: whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, 2,151 whites died as a result of being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks.

essentialsaltes: The bolded text is a lie. An obvious lie. A childish lie. Only the innumerate would fall for such a transparent lie.

OldWiseGuy: 1.9 times is "almost twice" (unless my math is off).

Iluvatar: Do you know what percentage of the population is made up by blacks? Do you know why that's important to your argument?

OldWiseGuy: So what is the "truth of the matter"?

essentialsaltes: Iluvatar ... and I have been trying to help you find the truth for yourself. Start with iluvatar's questions

Wednesday

OldWiseGuy: I asked for your opinion, not help with mine.

essentialsaltes: Sorry, no. You asked for the truth. The truth is independent of opinion.

You can find it if you go about the process with an honest and unbiased mind. If I just give it to you, you'll just reject it. Go back and answer Iluvatar's questions. You'll find it for yourself.

[TL;DR]

essentialsaltes: Excellent. Do you agree then, that it is not a fact (or a statistic) that "whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers."

Thursday

OldWiseGuy: I already conceded that point, in post 29. You're beating a dead horse here.

Saturday

2Timothy2:15: Here are some more stats. Stats clearly show that more white people are killed by police year over year than any other race.

essentialsaltes: Yes, and more right handed people are on death row than left handers. That's not the relevant statistic.

Even our local curmudgeon OldWiseGuy conceded this point. Black people are more likely to be killed by police, year after year. That is the relevant statistic.

2Timothy2:15: If black people are more likely to be killed the numbers would match, which they don't.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/951176.html

Many people have recently opined about the justifiability of punching a Nazi(*) in the face. A surprising (to me) number of people are for it.

(*)To clarify, unless we're talking about these six Nazis, at best there are 'neo-Nazis' these days, or 'jerks with hateful ideas who are dangerously close to the levers of power'.

I test the Nazi punch hypothesis out in my own mind, and I just find it hard to accept. I mean, what if it was a lady Nazi? In Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah wisely observes that "in America, if a girl is kicking your ass, you do not have to be a gentleman." Honestly, I'm egalitarian enough that if a boy or girl is kicking your ass, you do not have to be a gentleperson.

And yes, if a boy or girl is kicking that helpless person over there's ass, this probably requires some intervention.

But these rules are not just about kicks and asses. They should be good for punches and faces. "Hey you! Anonymous coward punching an unsuspecting guy in the face! What's wrong with you?"

Anyway, some dudes may have some archaic patriarchal misgivings about punching a lady Nazi. Perhaps they could do something else generally considered illegal or antisocial? Maybe they could throw rocks at them or grab their pussies? This new moral hypothesis opens up so many interesting questions!

But it's fraught with so many logistical difficulties. I mean, not every neo-Nazi will go to the trouble of tattooing 88 on his forehead. They might look like anybody! If only we could form an organization that could identify them based on objective criteria and make them wear distinctive clothing or something, so we'd know who to punch.

But there seem to be deeper flaws that worry me. A lot.

If we decide that, for a certain class of people, we no longer have to treat them with the usual rules of civility and humanity, it would seem (to avoid being hypocrites) that other people could use this same hypothesis to justify treating other classes of people as sub-human.

Wait a moment! Have I fallen into Bizarro world? Nazis treating certain classes of people as sub-human is one of the justifications for treating them as subhuman. I have it all backward! It's not that we would be hypocrites to NOT allow other people to think this way in the future. It's that other people thinking that way in the past made US start to think like them.

You can't fight an ideology by implicitly accepting its tenets. You are strengthening it by making it the only way of looking at the world.

Now some have correctly pointed out that neo-Nazis can be experts at using 'the System' to quash opposition. "Oh, we're the victims, save us, save us, Law & Order!"

So then I ask: Why the fuck would you fall into their trap by punching people on the street? Are you stupid?

The good guys also have some experts at using 'the System', from politicians to judges to civil rights lawyers. I'm neither, but I expect they would advise you to refrain from punching people in the face.

Because it does play into their trap. Punch a few Nazis, set fire to a building, and the system might restrict the rights to "habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone". In the name of security. To protect the crybabies.

And what is the goal of Nazipunch? What positive result is achieved?

When Obama was elected, the racists were gnashing their teeth, and afraid, and the left held out its hand and said:

And the dummies on the right were afraid Obama was going to grab their guns and put them in FEMA camps.

And so they hid in their bunkers, clutching their guns and bibles, despising the left, falling into their own groupthink, biding their time until... well, until their savior appeared. And they voted for him, to the astonishment of all those who thought they were safely and silently encapsulated in gun-lined bunkers where their unchallenged ideologies couldn't possibly hurt anybody.

And you know what? As dumb as they are, they played by the rules. In the state houses, the governor's mansions, the House and Senate, and now the White House. It's true that "democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

Now the shoe is on the other foot.

And the other side is afraid Trump is going to grab their pussies and put them in death camps.

It's all very familiar. Not all that different.

Now this is not to say that everything is fine. Trump's actions have real effects on pussies and Syrians and so on. But do you know how many pussies get contraception coverage on their insurance when you punch a Nazi?

Zero.

If anything, it plays into the hands of crybaby Nazis.

If you are conspiracy minded, well... probably you have already written me off as a closet Nazi, but consider this.

We know the Russians want to create chaos in our country.

We know the Russians have worked hard to get the dumb-dumb right to distrust the government, distrust the mainstream media, and listen only to RT.com and Breitbart.

Fortunately, we on the left are waaaaay too smart to be manipulated by Russian propaganda. Right? Right? No one would be suckered in by the idea that democracy or free speech are inherently flawed concepts, and are better replaced by punches in the face. Angry moron Trump voters wanted to blow up the system. Only idiots would want to blow it up bigger.

So there's been a bit of a kerfuffle.

The enigmachat email list has, over the years, died down in frequency to near moribund levels. But it perked up again with the campaign and questions about ballot initiatives. I gave my opinions. And there was a little back and forth. And then Darnell stuck his nose in with his usual flat-affected poorly-expressed stupidity. Now, I've only met Darnell in person a couple times, and nothing of much note occurred, but most of his email conversation has been repugnant and poorly thought out and expressed, as was this instance. So, because for me, he is only an object of disdain, detestation, and occasional humor, I tried to elicit further commentary from him, hoping to hear him express more poor, repugnant opinions for the edification of all (i.e. so that everyone would know he's an idiot with repugnant views).

But things took a turn.

thefayth went off. "I am deeply distressed by the email I received today on the EnigmaChat mailing list by Mr. Darnell Coleman that continues a cycle of inappropriate statements and behavior over the last 5 years." [my emphasis]

For better or worse, this message hit me before dawn, before coffee, and the first couple responses I saw firmed up my impression, also influenced by certain whispers and gossip, that this was not just about ideas and words, but behavior. And then I fucking went off.

There was a blinding flash of crystal clarity that, although I saw Darnell as an object of ridicule with stupid ideas, and that (only in comparison, mind you) I could be Vol-fucking-taire in amusing myself in showing him up... in actual fact, he was causing harm to people. And so:

Thanks, Faith.

I detest Darnell. I have only met him once or twice, so most of my interaction has been online. But that has been quite enough to last a lifetime.

His opinions are usually offensive, and always poorly thought out and expressed.

Current leadership will have to decide whether his poisonous contributions to the club require action within the guidelines of the group.

I am sensitive to the issue of viewpoint discrimination. I wouldn't want him to be removed simply for holding, or even expressing, unpopular beliefs. But it may well be that his behavior has reached a point that necessitates action.

Looking back, Enigma has from time-to-time had its own little basket of deplorables. From the painfully socially inept, to the gropy, to the political morons, to the religious bigots, to the anti-religious bigots (hi!).

The (rarely used) solution has generally been to encourage the deplorables to 'self-deport'. Make it clear that many people in the club don't want them there. And maybe the best way to make that clear is for many people to actually express it to him.

For the sake of our inboxes, people should write to Darnell personally. However, it might be useful as a record if you could also post a comment in Faith's post to the Enigma Facebook group, so that the powers that be can gauge the sentiment of the members.

But while I have the floor...

Darnell... go away and don't come back. I don't want you in my club. Your negative presence distresses many members and detracts from their experience. I fear you may be a psychic vampire who derives some sick pleasure from distressing others; if so, please find help. Or at least find some other group to infest, because the villagers here are sharpening their stakes. If not, just go already.

I realize (both before and after coffee) that this was an extreme and extrajudicial step. But it was also clear to me that the judicial process had been tried, and those who had complained had received no satisfaction. I do feel for the people in leadership of the club, who are in a difficult position. But I mouthed off.

And pretty soon it was clear that the leadership was taking this seriously, and I tried my best to shut the fuck up, and let them work.

But the response to my incendiary post, and a few like it, was fascinating to me.

>>***: I think using a public forum to do this is unjustifiable and unnecessary, and I don't want to be a part of it.

>Thank you for saying that, ***. I agree fully that such an extremely public discussion is, at the very least, unkind.

Aye ***, well spoken sir.

My visceral reaction to the middle comment was: "Absolutely. Yes, it was unkind. I would be mortified if I was accidentally that unkind, no-- rude, to someone. This was calculated and intentional."

But the weight of these comments coming together in a row finally gave me some insight into what it is like to be 'gaslighted' to use the common parlance.

Maybe I was wrong for backing up Faith. Maybe going through official channels was the best way to deal with it. Maybe I was wrong to be intentionally and publicly rude to Darnell. Maybe this is a witch hunt, and for once I'm the torch-bearing idiot.

Then

alpiyn dropped a nuclear bomb. As much as I was feeling gaslighted for picking on a moron who had done nothing worse to me than be a moron, how much worse or more alienated would people feel who had actually been harmed by this moron?

Now, I'm an old fart. And there's a new generation that's taken over. And that's as it should be. But I find it strange that I have (ok, had!) this idea that the younger crowd are much more up-to-date on this shit than the old fart brigade. We old farts roll our eyes at, "Do I have your explicit consent to nibble your left earlobe?" And we old farts who adore the First Amendment are a bit leery of the new guard's desire to curtail unpleasant speech. But I had this idea that the little pupal SJWs of today are out trying to make 'safe spaces' for everyone to enjoy. And at least in this case, it turned out to be a bunch of crap.

But at least I was right about the fuckdoodly First Amendment cuntborking.

When the official response came, part of it was this.

1) Many of these grievances spawn from online interactions and statements from this individual. In particular, many of them come from threads in the enigma-chat emailing list that is primarily populated by older alums of the club. The individual has been removed from these lists, as well as blocked from this group. That being said, it must stated that some in the officership were unaware of the existence of this list, and we believe that many of the current members who attend weekly meetings were also unaware of its existence. In light of this, we wish to formally disavow the enigma-chat list and leave it in the hands of the alumni. The enigma-chat list will remain as an opt-in option for all members, but we will not be responsible for its content. The transition of moderator responsibility shall take place in the coming week.
2) As for the individual’s continued membership in the club, we have yet to reach a verdict. We are speaking with our advisers on the best course of action to take to avoid repercussions.

Now again, I realize the leadership is in a tough position, and everything does have to be done in accordance with the guidelines (as I called for in my original rant), and this may take time. But I still think it's sad that the old farts on the email list get unceremoniously shitcanned, while judgment is reserved in the case of the malefactor. To be fair, this message was released before alpiyn unleashed hellfire.

It's also interesti.. no, infuriating, that some of the messaging has been that all of the complaints have been about just ideas and words. But Faith's message does mention behavior. My message explicitly protects ideas and expression, but draws the line at behavior. Again, I hope that the official response, when it comes, takes into account whether it was merely expression of unpopular views, or if it was behavior that created a hostile environment.

But getting back to one of the shortest of the many soapboxes I've stood on in this rant, enigmachat is too full of the free discourse of ideas and poopoo words to be a part of what the club wants to be in this day and age.

So in conclusion...

Fuck you in your fatherfisting cloaca!

/mic drop

Some of the same researchers involved in the 2003 American Mosaic Survey have released results of the 2014 study.

There a really glaring result relating to when people were asked to agree/disagree with the following statement across a variety of demographics:

This group does not at all agree with my vision of American society

Atheists 39.6% 41.9%
Muslims 26.3% 45.5%
Homosexuals 22.6% 29.4%
Conservative Christians 13.5% 26.6%
Recent immigrants 12.5% 25.6%
Hispanics 7.6% 17.1%
Jews 7.4% 17.6%
Asian Americans 7.0% 16.4%
African Americans 4.6% 16.9%
Spiritual, but not religious — 12.0%
Whites 2.2% 10.2%

First number is from 2003.

All of the numbers have increased. Some by quite a lot. Even white people, who are totally awesome and chill, went from 2.2% to 10.2%. Disagreement with conservative Christians nearly doubled to 26.6%. The previous study was not long after 9/11, but disagreement with Muslims jumped from 26.3% to 45.5%. Immigrants doubled. Hispanics, Jews, Asians, African Americans... all jump from single digits to double digits.

This is what polarization and demonization look like.

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Page generated Jan. 6th, 2026 05:41 pm

Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with whitebutnotnarrow

MAGA infighting, in re skilled worker visas

Speculative LA, RA Lafferty, On the Road, Antisemitism

After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think

Gone Fishin' - Goliath - Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot

News Stories Colliding in My Head

Chronic City - White Evangelical Racism

Galileo & the Science Deniers / Mediocre

Altered Behavior Changes Minds

Farnham's Freehold, by Robert A Heinlein

Frederick Douglass, by William S McFeely

Lovecraft Country & 50% of Down Girl

The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin

White Fragility, by Robin J. DiAngelo

From Bacteria to Bach and Back ; When the Sleeper Wakes

Earning the Rockies, by Robert Kaplan

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward

Sisyphus

Nazipunch 2017

Torches and Pitchforks

Everybody hates Everybody more