Brief Snarky Notes on UK Politics

They could let the Scots run the UK. They seem to know what they're doing.

No? Is there no-one the country might rally behind? Anyone? Leaders of vision and courage are now needed - are there any who might emerge?

The problems of the UK are the problems of modern democracy writ large. The US founders, classical republicans all, expected that the country would elect wise far-seeing statesmen to lead the USA. Instead the country was dominated by mechanics and shopkeepers, and the demagoguery was beyond belief. It elected the slaving, genocidal Andrew Jackson, who left the USA in a shambles for generations.

They didn't know. They couldn't know. But we do know. What now?

The Party of Rape

There is a feminist theory that the oppression of women is the model for all other forms of oppression. If men are willing to abuse women they are intimate with, even to turn intimacy into abuse, goes the theory, who will they not abuse?

And so, in the United States. A 10-year-old rape victim sought and was granted an abortion. And what is the response of the reactionary right wing in the United States? To blame the doctors who diagnosed her and who aborted the pregnancy. To blame her. To object that her rapist ought not have been in the United States. Anything but accept the responsibility for putting that girl in a horrible position or acknowledge that there are men who rape children and that this has been done before and will be done again. The girl and her doctors have come in for enormous harassment, while the antiabortion Republicans did not trouble itself to find out anything about her rapist.

And this is what the Republican Party is now fighting for: the right to abuse the victims of rape and the women who defend them, while ignoring their rapists. And, indeed, if they will fight for that, what form of oppression will they shun?

Kaiju Democracy

“But I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath—in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat.” - George F Kennan

Notes for a review: Hitler’s American Model

Whitman, James Q. Hitler’s American Model The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2018.

These are notes for a review I never finished and don't want to spend the time to write.

• The Nazis regarded the racism of the USA as, rather than something reprehensible, something encouraging and they hoped for its triumph. They modeled the infamous Nurmeberg Laws on US race law.
• Nazi antisemitic policy was at first aimed at immigration, getting Jews to what we would now call “self deport.”
• Whitman was interviewed over at Truthout; you can get a sense of his thesis reading the article, “Racist US Laws Provided Inspiration to the Nazis: An Interview With James Q. Whitman.”

“...to have a common law system like that of America is to have a system in which the traditions of the law do indeed have little power to ride herd on the demands of the politicians, and when the politics is bad, the law can be very bad indeed.” – James Q. Whitman

A Democracy, not a Republic

Also, local maximums

Democracy and Republic

I've just finished reading Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism Of The American Revolution. It's a stunning and strange history. I had no idea how different the democracy the founders created was from the republic they envisioned.

Neo-Monkeypox

The monkeypox that is now spreading around the world is a new variant that was discovered in 2017 by Dr. Dimie Ogoina, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Niger Delta University in Nigeria. Original monkeypox was not very transmissible between people, so children would get it from monkeys, it would spread a bit, and it would die out. This variant is more transmissible between people. The Nigerian outbreak was never controlled and has turned into a global epidemic. NPR report.

Reportedly (preprint paper, not peer-reviewed) neo-monkeypox continues to evolve through recombination.

I keep hearing that the epidemic is dying out but testing is thin and there isn’t testing a lot of testing outside the gay community. I hope it is dying out; if it breaks loose in the schools or jumps to an animal vector it’s going to be incredibly hard to control.

As of the NPR report on July 28th, not a single Nigerian had been vaccinated against monkeypox.

And, yes, poxviruses can infect birds. Croak!

Redemption Arc

I recently read a rather fun YA book series wherein all the characters who were not completely evil got some sort of redemption. The author herself says that these were her pandemic comfort writing project. There’s a lot to like about the books; the ethics of empire are discussed, and the ethics required of superheroes are demonstrated – if you, in your person, are a weapon of mass destruction, what rules do you live by, so that you do not turn into a monster?

But I don’t believe. Not everyone can be redeemed. Some people lack empathy. Others lack the capacity for introspection that allows them to recognize their failings. Still others have made irrevocable choices that turn them into monsters in human skin suits. What redemption was there for Hilter’s captains? What for the people who decided, monstrously, to spread covid throughout the United States? To the group that probably plotted to give the cruel murderer Mohammed bin Salman the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, and may have successfully done so? Not only do I not see redemption for these, I do not even see that they ought to be allowed to live.

Yes, Donald J. Trump has led me to reconsider the death penalty. He is not only an alleged rapist and a likely traitor, he has not only likely started a civil war in the USA, he seems to have taken actions that might yet cause World War III. He has had numerous opportunities to recognize the damage he has done and make amends and has not done so – he is one of those who both lack empathy and the capacity for introspection. Do we allow him to continue his depredations?